
FLASH^LIGHTS 

FROM THE 

SEVEN SEAS 



WILLIAM L. STIDGER 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





D0DEDSDlfl44 




Gppyiiglit]^^-. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



FLASH-LIGHTS 
FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 



WILLIAM L. STIDGER 



i 

i 




MT. TAISHAN, CHINA, SAID TO BE THE OLDEST WORSHIPPING 
PLACE ON EARTH. 



FLASH-LIGHTS 

FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 



BY 
WILLIAM L.'STIDGER 

AUTHOR OF "standing ROOM ONLY," "STAR 

DUST FROM THE DUGOUTS," "OUTDOOR 

MEN AND MINDS," ETC. 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

BISHOP FRANCIS J. McCONNELL 



ILLUSTRATED 
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY 

THE AUTHOR 




NEW ^S^ YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 

V ^' - - 



r 



.5 "5 



COPYRIGHT, 1921, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



NOV 23 19?! 
0)CLA627863 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 









DEDICATED TO 

MARY I. SCOTT 

A WOMAN FRIEND 

WHO PUSHED BACK THE HORIZONS OF 

THE WORLD AND LED ME TO THE 

BEGINNING OF THE TRAIL THAT 

HAS NO end: the TRAIL OF 

DREAMS AND TRAVEL 



INTRODUCTION 

By bishop FRANCIS J. McCONNELL 

THE Rev. William L. Stidger is one of 
the most thoroughly alive men in the min- 
istry today. He sees quickly, reacts instan- 
taneously, and knows how to bring others to a 
like alertness of mental and spiritual seizure. If it 
be said of him that he is impressionistic it must be 
remembered that the impressions are made on 
a mind of sound purpose and communicated to 
others for the sake of the truth behind the im- 
pression. His narratives of travel do not belong 
in the guide-book category or in that of the scien- 
tific geography. But if you wish to know what 
it would be like to visit yourself the countries 
described, the reading of Mr. Stidger's sketches 
will help you. If it be said that what one after 
all is getting is the Stidger view, it must not be 
forgotten that the Stidger view is marvellously 
vital and enkindling. The Stidger vitality is 
bracing and health-giving. It is a tonic for all 

vii 



viii INTRODUCTION 

of US who are getting a little old and sluggish. | 

The contagion of youth and energy are in this 
book : it will reach and stir all who read. 

Francis J. McConnell 
Pittsburgh, Pa. 



FOREWORD 

THAT vast stretch of opal islands ; jade con- 
tinents; sapphire seas of strange sunsets; 
mysterious masses of brown-skinned human- 
ity; brown-eyed, full-breasted, full-lipped and 
full-hipped women ; which we call the Orient, can 
only be caught by the photographer's art in flash- 
light pictures. 

It is like a photograph taken in the night. It 
cannot be clear cut. It cannot have clean outlines. 
It can only be a blurred mass of humanity with 
burdens on their shoulders ; humanity bent to the 
ground ; creaking carts ; weary-eyed children and 
women; moving, moving, moving; like phantom 
shadow-shapes; in and out; one great maze 
through the majestic ages; one confused history 
of the ancient past ; emerging; but not yet out into 
the sunlight! 

Such masses of humanity; such dim, uncertain 
origins of unfathered races; these can only be 
caught and seen as through a glass darkly. 

Paul Hutchinson, my friend, in '^The Atlantic 
Monthly'' says of China what is true of the whole 
Orient : 

ix 



X FOREWORD 

"In this vast stretch of country, with its poor com- 
munications, we can only know in part. When one sets 
out to generaHze he does so at his own peril. The only 
consolation is that it is almost impossible to disprove any 
statement; for, however fantastical, it is probably in 
accord with the facts in some part of the land." 

The facts, fancies, and fallacies of this book 
are gleaned from the rovings and r amblings of 
a solid year of over fifty-five thousand miles of 
travel; through ten separate countries: Japan, 
Korea, China, the Philippine Islands, French 
Indo-China, the Malay States, Borneo, Java, 
Sumatra and the Hawaiian Islands ; across seven 
seas: the Pacific Ocean, the Sea of Japan, the 
North China Sea, the Yellow Sea, the South 
China Sea, the Malacca Straits, and the Sea of 
Java; after visiting five wild and primitive tribes : 
the Ainu Indians of Japan, the Igorrotes of the 
Philippines, the Negritos of the same islands ; the 
Dyaks of Borneo, and the Battaks of Sumatra; 
face to face by night and day with new races, new 
faces, new problems, new aspirations, new ways 
of doing things, new ways of living, new evils, 
new sins, new cruelties, new fears, new degrada- 
tions; new hopes, new days, new ways, new na- 
tions arising; new gods, and a new God! 

When one comes back from such a trip, having 
fortified himself with the reading of many books 
written about these far lands, in addition to his 



FOREWORD xi 

travel, one still has the profound conviction that, 
after all is said, done, and thought out, the only 
honest way to picture these vast stretches of land 
and humanity is to confess that all is in motion ; 
like a great mass of bees in a hive,, one on top of 
the other, busy at buzzing, buying, selling, living, 
dying, climbing, achieving; groping in the dark; 
moving upward by an unerring instinct toward 
the light. 

At nights I cannot sleep for thinking about that 
weird, dim, misty panorama of fleeting, flashing 
pictures; those thousands of Javanese that I saw 
down in Sourabaya, who have never known what 
it means to have a home ; who sleep in doorways 
by night, and along the river banks; where 
mothers give birth to children, who in turn live 
and die out under the open sky. Nor can I forget 
that animal-like beggar in Canton who dug into 
a gutter for his food; or those hideous beggars, 
by winter along the railway in Shantung; or the 
naked one-year-old child covered with sores 
which a beggar woman in the Chinese section of 
Shanghai held to her own naked breast. Those 
pictures and a thousand others abide. 

One has the feeling that if he could go back, 
again, and again, and again to these far shores, 
and live with these peoples and die with them, 
then he would begin faintly to understand what 
it all means and where it is all headed. 



xii FOREWORD 

And this author, for one, is honest in saying 
that, in spite of careful investigation, in spite of 
extensive travel and a sympathetic heart, he sees 
but dimly. The very glory of it all, the age of it 
all, the wonder of it all, the mysterious beauty and 
thrill of it all; the thrill of these masses of 
humanity, their infinite possibilities for future 
greatness; like a great blinding flash of glory, 
dims one's eyes for a time. 

But, now, that he has, through quiet medita- 
tion and perspective, had a chance to develop the 
films of thought, he finds that he has brought 
back home pictures that one ought not to keep to 
one's self; especially in this day, when, what hap- 
pens to Asia is so largely to determine what hap- 
pens to America. 

So, out of the dark room, where they have 
been developing for a year, and out of the dim 
shadows of that mysterious land whence they 
came, they are printed and at the bottom of each 
picture shall be written the humble words: 

"Flash-Lights from the Seven Seas" 

William L. Stidger. 
Detroit, Michigan. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Introduction by Bishop Francis J. 

McCoNNELL vii 

Foreword ix 

CHAPTER 

I Flash-Lights of Flame 19 

II Flash-Lights Physical 33 

III Flash-Lights of Faith 49 

IV Flash-Lights of Fear 63 

V Flash-Lights of Frightfulness ... 79 

VI Feminine Flash-Lights loi 

VII Flash-Lights of Fun 123 

VIII Flash-Lights of Freedom 145 

IX Flash-Lights of Failure 165 

X Flash-Lights of Friendship .... 189 



XIU 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Mt. Taishan, the Oldest Worshipping Place 

ON Earth Frontispiece 

PAGE 

The Walled City of Manila 48 

Beautiful Filipino Girls 48 

Korean Girls with American Ideals and Train- 
ing 49 

Stepping Aside in Korea 49 

Confucius Tomb at Chufu, China .... 64 

Ruin of the Ming Tombs . 64 

Grinding Rice in China 65 

A Camel Train Entering Peking 65 

The Temple of Heaven, Peking 112 

A Beautiful Thirteen-Story Pagoda Near 

Peking 112 

A Wayside Temple and Shrine 113 

A Sunrise Silhouette, Java 113 

Old Bromo Volcano, Java 128 

A Side View of Beautiful Boroboedoer, Java . 128 

Naked and Otherwise 129 

A Dog Market 129 

XV 



FLASH-LIGHTS 
FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 



FLASH-LIGHTS 
FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

CHAPTER I 

FLASH-LIGHTS OF FLAME 

FIRE! Fire! Fire everywhere! 
Fire in the sky, fire on the sea,, fire on the 
ships, fire in the flowers,, fire in the trees of the 
forest; fire in the Poinsetta bushes which flash 
their red flames from every yard and jungle. 

In the tropical lands flowers do not burst into 
blossom; they burst into flame. Great bushes of 
flaming Poinsetta, as large as American lilac 
bushes, burst into flame over night in Manila. 

That great tree, as large as an Oak, which they 
call "The Flame of the Forest," looks like a tree 
on fire with flowers. One will roam the world 
over and see nothing more beautiful than this 
great tree which looks like a massive umbrella of 
solid flame. 

Every flower in the Orient seems to be a crim- 
son flower. The tropical heat of the Philippines, 
Java, Borneo, Sumatra, the Malay States and 

19 



20 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

India's far reaches; with beautiful Ceylon, and 
Burma; seems to give birth to crimson child- 
flowers. 

The sunsets burst into bloom, as well as the 
flowers. There is no region on earth where sun- 
sets flare into birth and die in a flash-light of 
glory and beauty like they do in the regions of 
the South China Sea. For months at a stretch, 
every night, without a break, the most wildly 
gorgeous, flaming, flaring, flashing crimson sun- 
sets crown the glory of the days. 

I have been interested in catching pictures of 
sunsets all over the world. I have caught hun- 
dreds of sunsets with the Graflex; and other 
hundreds have I captured with a Corona, just as 
they occurred; and I have never seen a spot on 
earth where the sunsets were such glorious out- 
bursts of crimson and golden beauty as across 
the circling shores of Manila Bay. 

Night after night I have sat in that ancient 
city and watched these tumultuous, tumbling, 
Turner-like flashes of color. 

One night the sky was flame from sea to 
zenith across Manila Bay. It was like a great 
Flame of the Forest tree in full bloom. Against 
this sky of flaming sunset-clouds, hundreds of 
ships, anchored in the bay, lit their lesser crimson 
lights; while,, now and then, a battleship which 
was signaling to another ship, flashed its message 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FLAME 21 

of light against the fading glow of glory in the 
crimson sunset. 

"It is light talking unto light ; flash unto flash ; 
crimson unto crimson!" said a friend who sat 
with me looking out across that beautiful bay. 

The picture of that flaming sunset, with the 
great vessels silhouetted against it ; with the little 
lights on the ships, running in parallel rows ; and 
the flashing lights of signals from the masts of 
the battleship will never die in one's memory. 

It was a quiet, peaceful scene. 

But suddenly, like a mighty volcano a burst 
of flame swept into the air at the mouth of the 
Pasig River. It leapt into the sky and lighted 
up the entire harbor in a great conflagration. 
The little ships stood out, silhouetted against that 
great flaming oil tanker. 

"It's a ship on fire !'' Otto exclaimed. 

"Let's go and see it !" I added. 

Then we were off for the mouth of the Pasig 
which was not far away. 

There we saw the most spectacular fire I have 
ever seen. A great oil tanker full of Cocoanut- 
oil had burst into flame, trapping thirty men in its 
awful furnace. Its gaunt masts stood out like 
toppling tree skeletons from a forest fire against 
the now deepening might ; made vivid and livid by 
the bursting flames that leapt higher and higher 



22 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

with each successive explosion from a tank of 
gasoline or oil. 

I got out my Graflex and caught several pic- 
tures of this flash-light of flame, but none that 
will be as vivid, as lurid, or as lasting as the flash- 
light that was etched into the film of my memory. 

The next flash-light of flame came bursting out 
of midnight darkness on the island of Java. 

We were bound for old Bromo,, that giant vol- 
cano of Java. We had started at midnight and it 
would take us until daylight to reach the crater- 
brink of this majestic mountain of fire. 

White flashes of light, leapt from Bromo at 
frequent intervals all night long as we traveled on 
ponies through the tropical jungle trail, upward, 
and onward to the brink of that pit of hell. 

White flashes of light leapt from Bromo at 
the narrow rail. They called them "Night- 
Blooming Lilies," and sure enough they blanketed 
the rugged pathway that night like so many tiny 
white Fairies. Indeed there was something 
beautifully weird in their white wonder against 
the night. They looked like frail, earth-angels 
playing in the star-light, sending out a sweet 
odor which mingled strangely with the odor of 
sulphur from the volcano. 

And back of all this was the background of 
that awful, thundering, rumbling and grumbling 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FLAME 2S 

volcano as somber as suicide. Strangely weird 
flashes lighted the mountains for miles around. 

"It looks like heat lightning back at home," said 
an American. 

"Only the flashes are more vivid!'' said an- 
other member of the party. 

Those flashes of light from the inner fires of 
the earth, bursting from the fissures of restless 
volcano Bromo shall ever remain, like some 
strange glimpse of a new Inferno. 

Volcanic Merapi, another belching furnace of 
Java, gave me a picture of a flash-light of flame. 

The night that we stayed up on the old temple 
of Boroboedoer, Merapi was unusually active; 
and now and then its flashes of flame lighted up 
the whole beautiful valley between the temple and 
the mountain. 

At each flash of fire., the tall Bamboo and 
Cocoanut trees loomed like graceful Javanese 
women in the midst of far-reaching, green, rice 
paddies; while two rivers that met below us, 
wound under that light like two silver threads in 
the night. 

Once, when an unusually heavy flash came 
from Merapi, we saw below us a beautiful Java- 
nese girl clasped in the arms of her brown lover. 
Each seemed to be stark naked as they stood 
under a Cocoanut tree like Rodin bronzes. 

It was this beautiful girl's voice that we later 



g4 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

heard singing to her lover a Javanese love song 
in the tropical night. 

This, I take it, was the Flame of Love; a flame 
which lights up the world forever; everywhere 
her devotees, clothed or naked, are the same ; for- 
ever and a day; be it on the streets of Broadway; 
along the lanes of the Berkshire Hills of New 
England; up the rugged trails of the Sierras; or 
along the quiet, tree-lined streets of an American 
village. It is a flame; this business of love; a 
flame which, flashing by day and night, lights the 
world to a new glory. 

• ••••• 

One night the missionaries in Korea saw flames 
bursting out against the hills. 

''What is it?" they cried, filled with fear. 

"The Japanese are burning the Korean vil- 
lages!'' said one who knew. 

All night long the villages burned and all 
night long the people were murdered. Runners 
brought news to the hillsides of Seoul where 
anxious, broken-hearted American missionaries 
waited. 

''One, two, three, four, five; ten, fifteen, twen- 
ty; thirty, forty, fifty; a hundred, two hundred, 
three hundred; villages are burning," so came 
the messages. 

The entire peninsula was lighted as with a 
great holocaust. 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FLAME 25 

It IS said that the light could be seen from 
Fusan itself, a hundred miles away. 

"From our village it looked like a light over a 
great American steel-mill city," said a missionary 
to me. 

And when the morning came, the flames were 
still leaping high against the crimson sky of 
dawn. 

For days this burning of villages continued. 
Belgium never saw more ruthless flame and fire; 
set by sterner souls ; or harder hearts ! 

That was two years ago. 

The villages are charred ruins now. Some of 
them have never been rebuilt. The murdered 
people of these villages have gone back to dust. 

The Japanese think that the fires are out. 
They thought, when the flames of those burning 
villages ceased leaping into the skies ; and at last 
were but smouldering embers ; that the flames had 
died. But the Japanese were wrong, for on that 
very day, the Flames of Freedom began to burn 
in Korean hearts and souls ! And from that day 
to this ; those flames have been rising higher and 
higher. These are Flash-Lights of Flame that, 
as the years go by; mount, like bacon lights of 
hope on Korean hills, to light the marching dawn 
of Korean Independence. 



26 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

A beautiful Korean custom that used to be; 
flashes a flame of fire across the screen of his- 
tory. 

In the old days the Korean Emperor used to 
have signals of fire flashed from hill to hill run- 
ning clear from the Chinese border to Seoul, the 
Korean capital. This signal indicated that all 
was well along the borders and that there was no 
danger of a Chinese invasion from the north. 

Korea has always been a bone of contention be- 
tween China, Russia and Japan. Consequently 
this little peninsula has always walked on uneasy 
paths, which is ever the fate of a buffer state. 

Never did a Korean Emperor go to sleep in 
peace until he looked out and saw that the signal 
fires burned on the beautiful mountain peaks sur- 
rounding the city of Seoul; fires indicating that 
the borders were safe that night and that inmates 
of the palace might rest in peace and security. 

"It must have been a beautiful sight to have 
seen the light flashing on the mountain peak there 
to the north" I said to an eighty-year old Korean 
patriarch. 

"It meant peace for the night," he answered. 
"It was beautiful. I often long to see those fires 
of old burning again on yonder mountain." 

He said this with a dramatic wave of his stately 
white robed arm. 

"The sunsets still flame from that western 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FLAME 27 

mountain peak, overlooking your city beautiful!" 
I said with a smile. 

"Yes, the sunsets still flame behind that peak," 
he responded with a far-away look in his aged 
eyes. 

"Perhaps the good Christian God is lighting 
the fires for you?" I suggested. 

"Yes, He, the good Christian God ; is still light- 
ing the fires for us ; but they are fires of freedom, 
fires of hope,, and fires of Democracy!" the old 
man said with a new light in his own flashing 
eyes. 

"And fires of peace," I added. 

"Yes, fires of Peace when freedom comes!" 
he responded. 

But whatever the political implications are; 
it is historically true that this old custom had 
existed for years until the Japanese took pos- 
session of Korea and stopped this beautiful tradi- 
tion. 

But behind that same mountain from which the 
bonfires used to flash in the olden days ; indicating 
that the frontiers were safe for the night; that 
no enemy hosts were invading the peninsula ; be- 
hind that mountain the fires of sunset still flame, 
flash, flare, and die away in the somber purple 
shadow^s of night. 



28 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

Nor shall one forget an evening at Wanju; a 
hundred miles from Seoul ; sitting in the Mission 
House looking down into that village of a hun- 
dred thousand souls; watching the fires of eve- 
ning lighted; watching a blanket of gray-blue 
smoke slowly lift over that little village; watch- 
ing the great round moon slowly rise above a jut- 
ting peak beyond the village to smile down on 
that quiet,, peaceful scene in mid-December. 

Koreans never light their fires until evening 
comes and then they light a fire at one end of the 
house, under the floor and the smoke and heat 
travel the entire length of the house warming 
the rooms. It is a poor heat maker but it is a 
picturesque custom. 

Thousands of flames lighted up the sky that 

night. The little thatch houses, and the children 

in their quaint garbs moving against the flames 

composed a strange Oriental Rembrandt picture. 

• ••«•• 

Streets! Streets! Streets! 

Lights! Lights! Lights! 

Somehow streets and lights go together. 

We think of our great Broadway. We ^mile 
at our superior ingenuity when we think of the 
"Great White Way." 

But for sheer beauty; fascinating, captivating, 
alluring, beauty ; give me the Ginza in Tokyo on 
a summer evening; with its millions of twinkling 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FLAME 29 

little lights above the thousands of Oriental shops ; 
with the sound of bells, the whistle of salesmen, 
the laughter of beautiful Japanese girls; the 
clacking of dainty feet in wooden shoes; and the 
indefinable essence of romance that hovers over a 
street of this Oriental type at night. Fll stake the 
romance, and beauty of the Ginza in Tokyo, 
against any street in the world. He who has 
looked upon the Ginza by night, has a Flash- 
Light of Flame; of tiny, myriad little flaming 
lights; burned into his memory; to live until he 
sees at last the lighted streets of Paradise itself. 
• ••••• 

Nor are the clothes of the Orient without their 
flaming colors. 

The beautiful kimonos of the Geisha girls of 
Japan; the crimson, gold, and rose glory of the 
Sing Song Girls of China; the flashing reds of 
the brown-skinned Spanish belles of the Philip- 
pines, as they glide, like wind-blown Bamboo 
trees through the streets; and the lurid, livid,, 
robes which men and women alike wear in Borneo 
and Java. In fact all of the clothes of the Orient, 
are flame-clothes. There are no quiet colors 
woven into the gown of the Oriental. The Orien- 
tal does not know what soft browns are. Crim- 
son is the favorite color for man or woman. They 
even make their sails red, blue, green and yellow. 
The beautiful colors of the sailboats in the 



30 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

harbor of Yokohama is one of the first flashing 
touches of the Orient that a traveler gets. From, 
Japanese Obies, which clasp the waists of Japan- 
ese girls,, to Javanese Sarongs, the flame and flash 
of crimson predominates in the gowns of both 
men and women. Where an American man 
would blush to be caught in any sort of a gown 
with crimson predominating save a necktie, the 
Japanese gentlemen, the Filipino, the Malay, and 
the Javanese all wear high colors most of the 
time. And the women are like splendid flaming 
bushes of fire all the time. 

A Javanese bride is all flame as far as her 
dress is concerned. Her face is powdered; her 
eyebrows are pencilled a coal black; her arms and 
shoulders daubed with a yellow grease. As to 
her dress, the sarong is a flaming robe that covers 
her body to the breasts; red being the dominant 
color; with a crown of metal which looks like a 
beehive on her head. Brass bracelets and orna- 
ments on her graceful arms complete her costume. 

• ••••• 

Even the Pagodas and Temples of the Oriental 
lands are flame. 

The most beautiful Temples of Japan are the 
Nikko Temples. 

"See Nikko and you have seen Japan'' is the 
saying that is well said. 

But when one has spent weeks or a week, days 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FLAME 31 

or a day at Nikko; he comes away with an im- 
pression of beautiful, tall, terraced, red-lacquered 
Pagodas; beautiful, graceful red-gowned women; 
beautiful, architectural masterpieces of Oriental 
Temples; all finished in wonderful red lacquer; 
beautiful red-cheeked women in the village stores; 
beautiful red Kimonos for sale in the Curio 
shops; red berries burning against the wonderful 
green grass; and all set off, against and under, 
and crowned by wonderful green rows of great 
Cryptomaria trees. These red Temples and these 
Red Pagodas — red with a red that is flaming 
splendor of the last word in the lacquer artist's 
skill; are like beautiful crimson jewels set in a 
setting of emerald. 

And back of all these Flash-Lights of Flame 
one remembers the path of a single star on the 
smooth surface of Manila Bay at night; and the 
phosphorescent beauty of Manila Bay where 
great ships cleave this lake of fire when the phos- 
phorus is heavy of a Summer night; and every 
ripple is a ripple of flame. One remembers the 
continuous flash of heat lightning down in Borneo 
and on Equatorial Seas; and one remembers the 
Southern Cross; and the flash-lights of fire in a 
half-breed woman's eyes. 



CHAPTER II 

FLASH-LIGHTS PHYSICAL 

THE red dawn of tropical Java was near. 
The shadows of night were still playing 
from millions of graceful Palm trees which 
swung gently in the winds before the dawn. 

Three ancient volcanos, still rumbling in 
blatant activity, loomed like gigantic monsters of 
the underworld, bulging their black shoulders 
above the earth. Before us lay a valley of green 
rice paddies. 

We had roved over ancient Boroboedoer all 
night, exploring its haunted crannies and cor- 
ners, listening to its weird noises; dreaming 
through its centuries of age; climbing its seven 
terraces. But in the approaching dawn, the one 
outstanding thrill of the night was that of a 
half-naked Javanese girl, who stood for an hour, 
poised in her brown beauty on the top of one of 
the Bells of Buddha, with some weird Javanese 
musical instrument, singing to the dawn. 

Then it came. 

"What? Her lover?'' 

33 



S4 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

No! The dawn! The dawn was her lover! 
Or, perhaps her lover was old Merapi. 

For, there, as we too, climbed to her strategic 
pinnacle of glory on top of the Buddha Bell to 
watch the dawn that she had called up with her 
weird music and her subtle brown beauty; before 
us., stretched thousands of acres of green rice 
paddies, spread out like the Emerald lawn of an 
Emerald Springtime in Heaven. Below us two 
silver streams of water met and wedded, to go 
on as one. 

As we stood there that morning on the top of 
Boroboedoer's highest bell, lines of Edna St. 
Vincent Millay swung into my soul : 

"All I could see from where I stood 
Was three tall mountains and a wood." 

Only in this instance all I could see were three 
volcanos. And the one in the center, old Merapi 
was belching out a trail of black smoke. These 
three volcanos, take turns through the centuries. 
When one is working the other two rest. When 
one ceases its activity, one of the others takes up 
the thundering anthem and carries it on for a few 
years or centuries and then lapses into silence, 
having done its part. While we were there it 
was Merapi's turn to thunder and on this par- 
ticular morning Merapi was busy before day- 
light. 



FLASH-LIGHTS PHYSICAL 86 

For fifty miles along the horizon, a trail of 
black smoke swept like the trail of black smoke 
which a train leaves in its wake on a still day. 
There was not another cloud in the eastern skies. 
Nothing but that trail of black smoke as we stood 
on the top of Boroboedoer at dawn and watched. 

Then something happened. It was, as if some 
magician had waved a magic wand back of the 
mountain. The rising sun was the magician. We 
saw its heralds spreading out, like great golden 
fan-ribs with the cone of the volcano, its direct 
center of convergence. Then before our aston- 
ished, our utterly bewildered, and our fascinated 
eyes,, that old volcanic cone was changed to a cone 
of gold. Then the golden cone commenced to 
belch forth golden smoke. And finally the trail 
of smoke for fifty miles along the horizon be- 
came a trail of golden smoke. 

This was a Flash-Light that literally burned 
its way into our memories to remain forever. 

There is another Flash-Light Physical which 
has to do with another volcano which I mentioned 
in the preceding chapter. Bromo is its name. 
It is still there, down on the extreme eastern end 
of Java, unless in the meantime the old rascal has 
taken it into his demoniacal head to blow himself 
to pieces as he threatened to do the day we lay on 
our stomachs, holding on to the earth, with the 
sides trembling beneath us. 



86 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

Old Bromo was well named. It reminds one 
of Bromo-Seltzer. I had heard of him long be- 
fore I reached Java. I had heard of the Sand 
Plains down into the midst of whose silver white- 
ness he was set, like a great conical gem of dark 
purple by day and fire by night. 

Travelers said ''You must see Bromo! You 
must see Bromo! If you miss everything else 
see Bromo! It's the most completely satisfac- 
tory volcano in the world." 

It was two o'clock in the morning when we 
started on little rugged Javanese ponies up 
Bromo's steep slopes. 

At daybreak we reached the mile high cliff 
which looks down into the world-famous Sand 
Sea. It was a sea of white fog. I have seen the 
same thing at the Grand Canyon and in Yosemite 
looking dow^n from the rims. I thought of these 
great American canyons as I looked down into 
the Bromo Sand Sea. By noon this was a great 
ten-mile long valley of silver sand which glittered 
in the sunlight like a great silver carpeted ball- 
room floor. Tourists from all over the world 
have thrilled to its strange beauty. Like the gov^n 
of some great and ancient queen this silver cloth 
lies there; or like some great silver rug of Oriental 
weaving it carpeted that valley floor at noon. 

But at daybreak it was a sea of mist into which 
it looked as if one might plunge, naked to the skin 



FLASH-LIGHTS PHYSICAL 37 

and wash his soul clean of its tropical sweat and 
dirt; a fit swimming pool for the gods of Java, 
of whom there are so many. 

Then something happened as we stood looking 
down into that smooth sea of white fog, rolling 
in great billows below us. There was a sudden 
roar as if an entire Hindenburg line had let loose 
with its ''Heavies." There was a sudden and 
terrific trembling of the earth under our feet 
which made us jump back from that precipice in 
terror. 

Then slowly, as if it were on a great mechanical 
stage, the perfect cone of old rumbling Bromo, 
from which curled a thin wisp of black smoke, 
bulged its way out of the center of that sea of 
white fog, rising gradually higher and higher 
as though the stage of the morning had been set, 
the play had begun, and unseen stage hands be- 
hind the curtain of fog, with some mighty derrick 
and tremendous power were lifting a huge vol- 
cano as a stage piece. 

Then came the quick, burning tropical sun, 
shooting above the eastern horizon as suddenly 
as the volcanic cone had been lifted above the 
fog. This hot sun burned away the mists in a few 
minutes and there, stretching below us, in all its 
oriental beauty was the sinewy, voluptuous form 
of the silver sand sea — Bromo's subtle mistress. 



38 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

There is another Physical Flash-light that will 
never die. 

Coming out of the Singapore Straits one eve- 
ning at sunset, bound for the island of Borneo 
across the South China Sea, I was sitting on the 
upper deck of a small Dutch ship. The canvas 
flapped in the winds. A cool, tropical breeze 
fanned our faces. Back of us in our direct wake 
a splashing, tumbling, tumultuous tropical sunset 
flared across the sky. It was crimson glory. In 
the direct path of the crimson sun a lighthouse 
flashed its blinking eyes like a musical director 
with his baton beating time. 

I watched this flashing, lesser, light against the 
crimson sunset and was becoming fascinated by 
it. 

Then great black clouds began to roll down 
over that crimson background as if they were 
huge curtains, rolled down from above, to change 
the setting of the western stage for another act. 

But as they rolled they formed strange and 
beautiful Doric columns against the crimson skies 
and before I knew it, I was looking at the ruins 
of an old Greek temple in the sky. Then the black 
clouds formed a perfect hour-glass reaching from 
the sea to the sky, with its background of crimson 
glory, and the little lighthouse seemed to be flash- 
ing off the minutes in the arteries of that hour- 
glass. 



FLASH-LIGHTS PHYSICAL 39 

And then it was night — a deep, dense, tropical 
night; heavy with darkness; rich with perfume; 
weird with mystery. But the sunset of crimson; 
the Doric temple in ruins; the hour-glass; and 
the flashing lighthouse still remained. 

• ••••• 

And who shall ever forget the sunsets of gold 
across Manila Bay night after night; with great 
warships and majestic steamers, sleek and slender 
cutters, white sails,, long reaching docks, and 
graceful Filipino women, silhouetted against the 
gold? And who shall forget the domes, towers, 
and pinnacles of the Cathedrals ; and the old fort 
within the city walls as they too were silhouetted 
against the gold of the evening? 

Mt. Taishan, the oldest worshiping place on 
earth, not far from the birthplace of Confucius; 
in Shantung; is one of the most sacred shrines of 
the Orient. There, countless millions, for hun- 
dreds of centuries, have climbed over six thou- 
sand granite steps, up its mile high slope to pay 
their vows; to catch a view of the blue sea from 
its imminence; to feel the sweep, wonder and 
glory of its sublime height, knowing that Con- 
fucius himself gloried in this climb. The exalta- 
tion of that glorious view; shall live,, side by side, 
with the view from the top of the Black Diamond 
range in Korea one winter's night as we caught 



40 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

the full sweep of the Japan Sea by sunset. In fact 
these all shall live as great mountain top Physical 
Flash-Lights etched with the acid of a burning 
wonder into one's soul! 

Nor shall one ever forget a month's com- 
munion with Fujiyama, that solitary, great and 
worshiped mountain of Japan; sacred as a 
shrine; beautiful with snow; graceful as a 
Japanese woman's curving cheek; bronzed by 
summer; belted with crimson clouds by sunset 
like a Japanese woman's Obie. It, too, presented 
its unforgettable Physical Flash-Lights. 

The first glimpse was one of untold spun-gold 
glory. There it stood. 

''There it is! There it is! Look!" a fellow 
traveler cried. 

"There is what?" I called. We were on top of 
a great American College building in Tokyo. 

"It's Fuji!" 

I had given up hope. We had been there two 
weeks and Fujiyama was not to be seen. The 
mists, fogs, and clouds of winter had kept it 
hidden from our wistful, wondering, waiting 
eyes. 

But there it stood, like a naked man, un- 
ashamed; proud of its white form; without a 
single cloud; burning in the white sunlight. Its 
huge shoulders were thrown back as with sup- 
pressed strength. Its white chest, a Walt ¥/hit- 



FLASH-LIGHTS PHYSICAL 41 

man hairy with age; gray-breasted with snow; 
bulged out Hke some mighty wrestler, challenging 
the world. No wonder they worship it! 

I had gloried in Fujiyama from many a varied 
viewpoint. I had caught this great shrine of 
Japanese devotion in many of its numberless 
moods. I had seen it outlined against a clear-cut 
morning sunlight, bathed in the glory of a broad- 
side of light fired from the open muzzle of the 
sun. I had seen it shrouded in white clouds ; and 
also with black clouds breeding a storm, at even- 
time. I had seen it with a crown of white upon 
its brow, and I had seen it with a necklace of 
white cloud pearls about its neck. 

Once I saw this great mountain looking like 
some ominous volcano through a misty gray win- 
ter evening. And one mid-afternoon I saw it al- 
most circled by a misty rainbow, a sight never to 
be forgotten on earth or in heaven by one whose 
soul considers a banquet of beauty more worth 
shouting over than an invitation to feast with a 
King. 

But the last sight I caught of Fuji was the last 
night that I was in Tokyo,, as I rode up from the 
Ginza on New Year's eve out toward Aoyama 
Gakuin, straight into a sunset, unsung, unseen by 
mortal eye. 

Before me loomed the great mountain like a 



42 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

monstrous mass of mighty ebony carved by some 
delicate and yet gigantic artist's hand. 

I soon discovered where the artist got the ebony 
from which to carve this pointed mountain of 
ebony with its flat top; for far above this black 
silhouetted mountain was a mass of ebony clouds 
that seemed to spread from the western horizon 
clear to the rim of the eastern horizon and beyond 
into the unseen Sea of Japan in the back yard of 
the island. It was from this mass of coal-black 
midnight-black clouds that the giant artist carved 
his ebony Fuji that night. 

But not all was black. Perhaps the giant 
forged that mountain rather than carved it, for 
there was a blazing furnace behind Fuji. And 
this furnace was belching fire. It was not crim- 
son. It was not gold. It was not red. It was 
fire. 

It was furnace fire. It was a Pittsburgh blast- 
furnace ten thousand times as big as all of Pitts- 
burgh itself, belching fire and flames of sparks. 
These sparks were flung against the evening 
skies. Some folks, I fancy, on that memorable 
night called them stars ; but I know better. They 
were giant sparks flung from that blast-furnace 
which was booming and roaring behind Fuji. I 
could not hear it roar; that is true; but I could 
feel it roar. I could not hear it because even so 
great a sound as that furnace must have been 



FLASH-LIGHTS PHYSICAL 43 

making will not travel sixty miles, even though it 
was as still up there in the old theological tower 
as a country cemetery by wint^er down in Rhode 
Island when the snow covers the graves. 

Then suddenly a flare of fire shot up directly 
behind the cone of Fuji, flaming into the coal- 
bank of clouds above the mountain, as if the old 
shaggy seer had forgotten his age and was dream- 
ing of youth again when the earth was young and 
he was a volcano. 

Above that streak of fire and mingled with it, 
black smoke seemed to pour until it formed a flat 
cloud of black smoke directly above the cone, and 
spread out like a fan across the sky to give the 
giant artist further ebony to shape his mountain 
monument. 

Then Fuji suddenly belched its volcano of color 
and lava; of rose and gold, amber, salmon, prim- 
rose, sapphire, marigold; and in a stream these 
poured over Fuji's sides and down along the 
ridge-line of the lesser hills until they too were 
covered with a layer of molten glory a mile thick. 

The clouds above Fuji forgot to be black. In 
fact, their mood of sullenness departed as by 
magic, and a smile swept over their massive mood 
of moroseness, and glory swept the skies. It was 
as if that furnace behind Fuji had suddenly burst, 
throwing its molten fire over the hills,, the moun- 
tains, the sky, the world. 



44 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

And '^mine eyes" had "seen the glory of the 
coming- of the Lord/' And that was enough for 
any man for one Hfetime. 

• ••••• 

Then there is beautiful Boroboedoer down in 
Java. It is a Physical Flash-Light that looms with 
its huge and mysterious historical architectural 
beauty like some remnant of the age when the 
gods of Greece roamed the earth. A sunrise 
from its pinnacled height I have already de- 
scribed, but the temple itself is unforgettable. 
There is nothing like it on the earth. 

Boroboedoer is one of the wonders of the 
world, although little known. It is in the gen- 
eral shape of the pyramid of Egypt, but more 
beautiful. One writer says, "Boroboedoer repre- 
sents more human labor and artistic skill than the 
great pyramids/' Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace 
says: "The human labor and skill expended on 
Boroboedoer is so great that the labor expended 
on the great pyramid sinks into significance be- 
side it." 

Boroboedoer was built in the seventh century 
A.D., by the Javanese under Hindu culture. 
Then came the Mohammedan invasion, destroying 
all such works of art in its pathway. 

It is said that the priests so loved this beautiful 
Buddha temple that they covered it over with 
earth and then planted trees and tropical vegeta- 



FLASH-LIGHTS PHYSICAL 45 

tion on it. In six months it was so overgrown that 
it looked Hke a hill. This is one explanation of 
why it lay for a thousand years unknown. 

The volcanic ashes undoubtedly helped in this 
secretion, for old Merapi even now belches its 
ashes,, rocks and dust out over the beautiful valley 
down upon which Merapi looks. 

From Djodjakarta you go to the temples. 

This great temple has, instead of the plain sur- 
faces of the great pyramid, one mile of beauti- 
fully carved decorations, with 2 141 separate 
panels depicting the life of Buddha from the time 
he descended from the skies until he arrived at 
Nirvana, or perfect isolation from the world. A 
history of more than a thousand years is told in 
its stone tablets by the sculptor's chisel, told beau- 
tifully, told enduringly, told magnificently. 

One writer says: "This temple is the work of 
a master-builder whose illuminated brain con- 
ceived the idea of this temple wherein he writes 
in sculpture the history of a religion." 

And again one says architecturally speaking 
of it: 

"It is a polygonous pyramid of dark trachyte, 
with gray cupulas on jutting walls and projecting 
cornices, a forest of pinnacles." 

There are four ledges to this hill temple and 
above each ledge or stone path are rows of Bud- 
dhas hidden in great 5-foot stone bells, and at the 



46 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

top crowning the temple a great 50-foot bell in 
which Buddha is completely hidden from the 
world, symbol of the desired Nirvana that all 
Buddhists seek. 

Mysterious with weird echoes of a past age it 
stands, silhouetted against a flaming sky to-night 
as I see it for the first time. It is late evening 
and all day long we have been climbing the 
ancient ruins of that magnificent age of Hindu 
culture on the island of Java. This temple of 
Boroboedoer was to be the climax of the day, and 
surely it is all of that. 

The fire dies out of the sky. The seven terraces 
of the stone temple begin to blur into one great 
and beautiful pyramid. Only the innumerable 
stone bells stand out against the starlit night; 
stone bells with the little peepholes in them, 
through which the stolid countenances and the 
stone eyes of many Buddhas, in calm repose, 
look out upon the four points of the compass. 

Night has fallen. We have seen the great 
Temple by crimson sunset and now we shall see 
it by night. 

The shadows seem to wrap its two thousand 
exquisite carvings, and its Bells of Buddha in 
loving and warm tropical embrace. But no 
warmer, is the embrace of the shadows about the 
Temple than the naked embrace of a score of 
Javanese bovs who hold to their hearts naked 



FLASH-LIGHTS PHYSICAL 47 

Javanese beauties who sit along the terraces look- 
ing into the skies of night utterly oblivious to the 
passing of time or of the presence of curious 
American strangers. 

Love is such a natural thing to these Javanese 
equatorial brown brawn and beauties that un- 
abashed they lie, on Buddha's silent bells, breast 
to breast,, cheek to cheek, and limb to limb; as if 
they have swooned away in the warmth of the 
tropical night. 

The Southern Cross looks down upon lover and 
tourist as we all foregather on the topmost ter- 
race of that gigantic shadow-pyramid of granite. 

The sound of the innumerable naked footsteps 
of all past ages seems to patter along the stone 
terraces. Now and then the twang of the Java- 
nese angklong and the beautiful notes of a flute 
sweep sweetly into the shadowed air. 

Then comes the dancing of a half dozen Java- 
nese dancing girls, naked to the waist, their crim- 
son and yellow sarongs flying in the winds of 
night, as, in slow, graceful movements, facing one 
of the Bells of Buddha they pay their vows and 
offer their bodies and their souls to Buddha ; and 
evidently, also to the Javanese youths who ac- 
company them in their dances. 

The sound of the voices of these Javanese 
girls — who in the shadows look for all the world 
like figures that Rodin might have dreamed — 



48 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS • 

mingling- their laughter with the weird music; ] 

shall linger long in one's memory of beautiful j 

things. '\ 

Their very nakedness seemed to fit in with the \ 

spirit of the night; a spirit of complete abandon- j 

ment to beauty and worship. In their attitudes j 

there seemed to be a mingling of religion and i 

earthly passion ; but it was so touched with rever- ^ 

ence that we felt no shock to our American sensi- \ 

bilities. '■ 

All night long we wandered about the terraces , 

of the old Temple. i 

We wondered how long the Javanese girls 

would remain. I 

At dawn when we arose to see Boroboedoer 

by daylight they were still there as fresh as the \ 

dawn itself in their brown beauty, the dew of j 

night glistening in their black hair and wetting j 

their full breasts. ] 

And across, from Boroboedoer the sun, in its 

dawning splendor^ was transforming belching j 

and rumbling old volcanic Merapi into a cone of \ 

goldo I 




LOOKING OVER THE WALLED CITY OF MANILA, AMERICAN SOL- 
DIERS SCALED THIS WALL A FEW YEARS AGO TO STAY. 





BEAUTIFUL FILIPINO GIRLS ALL OF WHOM SPEAK ENGLISH. 




KOKEAif GIRLS WITH AMERICAJS^ IDEALS AXD TRAILING. 




STEPPING ASIDE IK KOREA TO LET THE AMERICAN DEVIL 
WAGON GO BY. 



CHAPTER III 

FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAITH 

HE was an old man; gray-haired, gray- 
bearded; gray-gowned; and he knew that 
the Japanese Gendarmes would just as soon take 
his life as light a cigarette. They do each with 
inhumane impunity. One means as much to them 
as the other. 

He was under arrest for conspiracy in the 
Independence Movement. 

"Do you know about the Independence Move- 
ment?'' he was asked. 

"Yes, I know all about it," was his fearless 
reply; though he knew that that reply in itself 
might mean his death; even without trial or 
further evidence. Just the fact that he had ad- 
mitted that he knew anything at all about the 
movement was enough to throw him into prison. 
He was like an old Prophet in his demeanor. 
Something about the very dignity and sublime 
Faith of the man awed the souls of these crude 
barbarians from the Island Empire. 

"Since when was it begun?" asked the Gen- 
darmes. 

49 



50 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

''Since ten years ago when you Japanese first 
came to Korea," was the dignified reply. 

'Trom whence did it spring?" he was asked 
next. 

"From the hearts of twenty million people!" 

"Did twenty millions of people all get together 
then, and plan ?" 

"Not together in body but in spirit!" 

"But there must have been some men to start 
it?" the Japanese Gendarme said. 

"They all started it !" was the old man's reply. 

"Is there no one who had charge of this move- 
ment from the beginning?" 

"Yes,, there is one!" 

"Do you know him?" 

"I know him well !" 

"What is his name?" 

"His name is God !" said this seventy-year old, 
fearless Christian Korean Patriot. 

Such faith as I have indicated in the para- 
graphs above is a common thing in Korea. Never 
in the history of the world have Christian people 
been subjected to the same tortures, the same 
cruelties, the same terrors, for their Faith as 
the early Christian martyrs; save these; the 
Koreans. 

We had thought that the world had gotten 
past that day when men would be tortured, 
crushed, persecuted, and killed because they were 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAITH 51 

Christians but that day is not yet past as almost 
any American Missionary in Korea will testify. 

The Japanese officials will say that there is no 
persecution because of Christianity; but mission- 
aries in Korea know better. They will point to 
countless incidents when men, women and chil- 
dren have been hounded, and persecuted for no 
other reason than that they were Christians. 

''And when Jesus heard it. He marveled g'reatly 
and said to them that followed. Verily I say unto 
you I have not found so great faith, no, not in 
Israel !" might well be said of the Korean Chris- 
tians every hour, every minute, every second. 
They know what it means to die for their Faith. 

The story of Pak Suk Han is one of the most 
thrilling illustrations of Faith that I have ever 
heard in Oriental lands. He had been a Chris- 
tian since he was seven years of age. He was a 
brilliant speaker and the Assistant Pastor of the 
First Methodist Church at Pyeng Yang, where, 
even the non-Christians loved him. He was 
arrested on Independence Day and sent to prison 
where a barbarous Japanese officer, whom the 
natives called ''The Brute" kicked him in the 
side because he would not give up his Christ. 
From that kick and further inhuman treatment 
running over a period of six months; a disease 
developed which a most reliable missionary doc- 
tor told me ended Pak Suk Han's life. 



52 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

When he knew that he was about to die he said, 
"I have been a Christian and have served the 
church since I was seven years old. I have given 
my Hfe to Christ, all but the last six months in 
prison which I have given to my country. I have 
no regrets. I might have lived had I been willing 
to deny my nation's rights and give up my Christ. 
I am going home to my Father's house. Good- 
by!" No Christian martyrs in the early cen- 
turies of the persecutions by Rome ever died 
with greater glory in their souls; or with deeper 
Faith ! 

• ••••• 

The temperature was zero. 

The cold had swept down over night from the 
Siberian and Manchurian plains across the city 
of Seoul. The capital city of Korea was shiver- 
ing with cold. But it was vibrant with something 
else. It was vibrant with a great sense of some- 
thing impending. 

There were those who said that the restlessness 
in the souls of the Koreans had died down with 
the terrible days of the March Independence 
Movement ; but I knew that the faith of the people 
was deeper than that. I knew that the flame of 
faith was just smouldering. 

I sensed this from the conversation of old-time 

missionaries who had been in Korea from the 
very beginning. I sensed it in the conversation 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAITH 53 

of young Koreans who had graduated from 
American schools. It was there; a vibrant, liv- 
ing, pulsing, faith in God and in the justice of 
their hopes : the Independence of Korea. 

The whole thing was summed up for me in a 
flash. It was a flash of the light of a tremendous 
faith that blinded mine eyes for a day ; but my 
soul it lighted as with a great eternal light. 

A Korean boy stepped into the home of a mis- 
sionary friend of mine, whose name I dare not 
use. If I did he would likely be sent home by the 
Japanese. Men have been sent home for less. 

The snow crunched under his feet as he walked 
up across the yard and the porch. He knocked 
at the door. 

**Come in," said the missionary, kindly. 

The boy stepped in. The missionary had never 
seen him before. The boy was moved deeply as 
with a great emotion. He seemed to have carried 
into that quiet missionary home with him some 
of the tenseness of the outside air and some of the 
tenseness of the political situation. 

"What do you want?" asked the missionary. 

"I want to talk with you about something very 
important," he replied in Korean. 

''All right! Go ahead! Do not be afraid. I 
am your friend !" 

"So I know. All missionaries are our friends." 

"Then you need not be afraid to talk." 



54 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

"No !" said the boy. But he did not talk. His 
agitation was growing more marked. 

"Go on, my boy! Tell me what you came for/' 

The Korean boy looked at the half open door 
which led into the kitchen. The missionary, with- 
out a word, stepped over and closed that door, be- 
cause he understood. 

The boy himself closed a door which led into 
the missionary's study. For in Korea in these 
days no home; not even a missionary's home, is 
free from spies. 

The boy started to talk hurriedly. The mis- 
sionary soon saw that he was not talking about 
the thing that he had come for. 

"Come to the point ! Come to the point ! You 
did not come to me, in such secrecy, to talk com- 
monplace things like that!" said the missionary 
a bit sharply. 

Then the boy suddenly dropped to his knees be- 
hind the missionary's desk and whipped out a big 
knife. Then he took from his white gown a long 
piece of white cloth. This he laid out on the 
floor. Then he opened his sharp knife with a 
quick motion and before the missionary knew it, 
he had ripped the index finger of his right hand, 
from, the tip to the palm, clear to the bone, until 
the blood spurted all over the floor. 

"What are you doing, my boy?" cried the mis- 
sionary. 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAITH 55 

The boy smiled a sublime smile and then knelt 
on his knees over the white cloth and before the 
missionary's tear-misty eyes wrote across the 
immaculate cloth in his own blood the words: 
''Mansei! Mansei! Mansei! Korean Inde- 
pendence Forever! Self-determination!'' 

Then underneath these words in a few swift 
strokes in his own blood he drew a picture of the 
Korean flag. And as he drew, now and then the 
blood would not flow fast enough ; and he took his 
knife, as one primes a fountain pen; and cut a bit 
deeper to open new veins in order that the flag of 
his country and the declaration of his faith might 
be written in the deepest colors that his own 
veins could furnish. 

Finally, after what seemed hours he jumped 
to his feet and handed the missionary that flag; 
crying as he did so : "That is our faith ! That is 
the way we Koreans feel ! You are going back to 
America! We want America to know that our 
faith in the Independence of Korea has not died! 
The fire burns higher to-day than ever. The 
Japanese cruelties are worse! The need is 
greater! The oppression is more terrible! Our 
determination is deeper than ever before ! I have 
come here this day, knowing that you are going 
back to America ; I came to write these words in 
my own blood that you may know; and that 
America may know; that our faith is a flame 



56 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

which burns out like the beacon Hghts on the 
Korean hills, never to die!" 

• ••••• 

The most scintillating Flash-light of Faith that 
I saw in the Orient was in the Philippine Islands. 
We were traveling the jungle trail to visit a tribe 
of naked Negritos. These are diminutive people 
who look like American negroes only they are 
much smaller; much more underfed, and who 
live in trees very much like the Orangutans of 
Borneo. They eat roots and nuts. They hunt 
with bows and arrows. 

They are the lowest tribe in mentality on the 
Islands. 

It was a terribly hot, tropical day and I had a 
sunstroke on the way up the mountainside to 
this Negrito village. 

I did not expect to get back alive. 

For three solid hours under a killing tropical 
sun, without the proper cork helmet and protec- 
tion, a pile driver kept hammering down on my 
head. I felt it at every step I took. Finally I 
dropped unconscious on the trail. After several 
hours I was able to proceed to the top of the 
mountain, where the Negritos were camped. 

We got there about two o'clock and had lunch. 
As we ate about fifty Negritos swarmed about us. 

They were a horrible looking crowd; stark 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAITH 57 

naked, filthy with dirt ; starved to skin and bones ; 
and animal-like in every look and move. 

I was so sick that I was not able to eat the 
lunch which had been provided in baskets. I lay 
on my back trying to get back my strength. 

As the rest of the expedition ate,, the Negritos 
with hungry eyes, crowded closer. 

One hideous old man was in the forefront of 
the natives. He was so hideous looking that he 
was sickeningly repulsive to me as I looked at him 
crouched as he was like an animal with a streak 
of sunlight playing on his face. 

This streak of sunlight, with ruthless severity, 
made the ugly scabs of dirt stand out on his old 
wrinkled face. That face had not felt the touch 
of water in years. His whole body was covered 
with dirt and sores. Wherever the sunlight 
struck on that black body it revealed scales like 
those on a mangy dog. His body was also cov- 
ered with gray hairs matted into the dirt. 

"That old codger represents the nearest thing 
to an animal that the human being can reach,'' 
said McLaughlin, one of the oldest missionaries 
on the island. 

^'You're right!" I said. "He looks as much 
like a Borneo Orangutan as any human being 
I ever saw.'' 

"And he lives like one, too; up in a tree in a 
nest of matted limbs and grass," said another. 



58 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

"IVe traveled among the wild tribes of the 
world all my life and I have seen the lowest hu- 
man beings on earth; in Africa,, South America, 
Malaysia, Borneo, Java — Australia — every- 
where," said a widely traveled man in the crowd, 
"and I never saw a type as low in the scale as 
that old fellow !" 

So we discussed him as the lunch proceeded. 
He did not know, of course, that we had con- 
signed him to the lowest rung on the ladder of 
humanity, so he just sat looking at us with his 
animal-like eyes as we ate; and at me as I lay 
under a tree trying to recover my strength for 
the trip back. 

''He is not a human being !'^ added a philoso- 
pher in the crowd. ''He is lower than that stage. 
He doesn't seem to have a single spark of human- 
ity left in him !" 

Then the meal over ; the missionaries started to 
hand out what was left of the food to these starv- 
ing Negritos. The old man whom we had decided 
was the lowest type of a human being on earth 
seemed, after all, to be the leader of the tribe; no 
doubt because of his age; perhaps because of 
something else which we were later to discover. 

McLaughlin handed out a sandwich to the old 
man. 

"Did he eat it himself?'' 

"He did not I He handed it to a child near by." 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAITH 59 

McLaughlin handed out another sandwich 
which was left. 

"Did the old man, whom we had decided was 
more of an animal than a human being, eat that 
one?" 

*'He did not. He took it over behind a tree 
where another old man was timidly hiding and 
gave it to him." 

McLaughlin handed out another sandwich. 

"Did the old man eat that one?*' 

"He did not. He took it over and gave it to an 
old woman near by." 

And so it continued, until every last piece of 
food was disposed of. That old man; whom we 
had decided was an animal ; saw to it, that every 
man, woman, and child in that crowd was fed 
before he took a single bite himself. 

Then he suddenly disappeared. In half an 
hour he came back with an armful of great, 
broad, palm leaves. He spread these out on the 
ground in the shade of a tree; did this old man; 
this hideous looking monster ; and then motioned 
for me to lie down on the bed he had made for 
me. He saw that I was sick. 

Then he disappeared once again, and when he 
returned he was carrying a long Bamboo-tube full 
of clear, cool water which he had gotten from a 
mountain spring. He brought it to where I was 
lying on the bed he had made for me and with this 



60 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

water he cooled my fevered, burning- head; and 
from this water he gave me to drink; he w^hom 
we had decided was the lowest type of a human 
being on earth. 

And I am writing here to say ; that I have never 
seen a ^'cup of cold water given in His name" that 
was given with a higher, or a deeper sense of 
the Divine spark of God in humanity than I saw 
that tropical summer afternoon, and this water 
was given by the naked Negrito whom we had 
decided was the lowest human being on the earth. 
, Yet even in this animal-man ; even in this naked 
savage ; there was a spark of the Divine that made 
us forever have a deeper and a more abiding faith 
that God never did and never shall make a man to 
live on this old earth that He did not have some 
purpose in making him. 

A few days before I took this trip up into the 
jungles of Luzon to visit this Negrito tribe I had 
received a copy of a slender volume of poems by 
Edna St. Vincent Millay. In the cool beauty of 
the tropical evening preceding this trip I had read 
the last lines of its introductory poem called "In- 
terim''; and these lines came flashing into my 
mind, even as I lay on the hot earth on that Luzon 
hillside. I can still remember the honey dripping 
like rain from the Cocoanut trees, and I can still 
hear the ceaseless and maddening cry of millions 
of Locusts that hot day; but suddenly came this 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAITH 61 

beautiful outpouring of faith from, the cool 
depths of a woman's woodland soul: 

"Not Truth but Faith, it is 
That keeps the world aHve ! If, all at once 
Faith were to slacken, — that unconscious faith 
Which must, I know, yet be the corner-stone 
Of all believing — birds now flying fearless 
Across would drop in terror to the earth; 
Fishes would drown ; and the all-governing reins 
Would tangle in the frantic hands of God 
And the worlds gallop headlong to destruction!" 

That day bred new faith into my soul ! 

I have told this story of the naked Negrito a 
hundred times since that eventful day and it 
kindles new flames of faith in human hearts every 
time it is repeated ! Mr. Edmund Vance Cooke, 
the poet,, heard it in Cleveland where I spoke in a 
Chautauqua programme and he said to me several 
months later in my home at Detroit, Michigan, 
''That was the most thrilling story of the Divine 
spark in a savage soul that I have ever heard! 
It gave me new faith in God and in humanity !" 

These, and a thousand other Flashlights of 
Faith come flashing out of that Far Eastern back- 
ground; the sublime faith of thousands of college 
men and women who are giving their lives be- 
cause they believe that savages and barbarians, 
such as I have described in this .Negrito ; Do have 
that spark of the Divine in their souls; faith that 



1 



62 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

Christian civilization, and Christian education; 
and a Christian God, may awaken that spark. 

And, indeed many a proof do they have of this 
miracle ! Only the other day from an American 
School, a girl from darkest Africa graduated as a 
Phi Beta Kappa honor scholar. Bishop William 
A. Taylor picked up this girl as a naked child in 
the jungles of Africa less than a quarter of a 
century ago ! 



CHAPTER IV 

FLASH-LIGHTS OF FEAR 

OUICK, short, sharp signals shot down the 
speaking tube from the bridge. 

The Chief Engineer of the Santa Cruz yelled 
across the boiler room. 

The bell rang for reverse and the entire ship 
shivered. 

A woman on deck screamed, and there was a 
rush to the railings, for the old boat had been 
slowly making its way up the winding, treacher- 
ous Saigon River out of the China Sea into 
French Indo-China. 

^'Those damned Chinks again, trying to escape 
the Devil !" 

**What's the matter. Pop ?" some one asked the 
captain. 

"That sampan full of Chinks was trying to 
get away from the River Devil, so they shot across 
our bow to fool him and we nearly ran them 
down." 

"Do they often indulge in that little friendly 
game with the Devil?" I asked him, smiling at 
his seriousness. 

63 



64 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

"Every time we enter one of these rivers they 
do it. I killed six of them going up the river at 
Shanghai a year ago. It gives me the creeps 
every time I see them shoot across our bow. A 
ship like this will cut 'em in two like a knife!" 

We looked over the green railing of the Santa 
Cruz. The big ship had almost come to a stop 
for the engines were still in reverse and the shal- 
low river mud was churned up until the other- 
wise clear water looked like a muddy pond. The 
little sampan, full of grinning, naked Chinese 
coolies was fifty feet away from us, and our 
American sailors were swearing at them in 
every language they knew and shaking big, 
brawny, brown fists in their grinning direction. 

It was considered a joke by the passengers but 
it was a very real thing to these poor ignorant 
Chinese. One sees this happen everywhere in the 
Orient. For the Chinaman starts out every 
morning in his sampan with the worst kind of a 
River Devil after him. He must rid himself of 
that Devil. So, when a big ship comes into sight, 
he waits until its bow is very close and then darts 
in front of its pathway. The idea is, that when a 
sampan full of Chinamen shoots in front of a big 
ship the Devil is supposed to follow the ship all 
that day, and let the Chinese junk or sampan 
alone. 

It is the pest of an American seaman's life, for 




CONFUCIUS' TOMB AT CHUFU, CHINA. 




RUIN OF THE MING TOMBS. 



in'nlfiJ'i^^J'i^i^^^^^^'^^^^ °^ 1°^^ iife, is almost as common 
m Cnma as the drag-on. 




GRINDING aiCE IK CHINA. 






A CAMEL TRAIN FROM THE PLAINS OF MONGOLIA ENTERING 
PEKING ON A winter's DAY. 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FEAR 65 

even a seaman hates to see a human being 
drowned. 

To an American mind this seems ridiculous. It 
even seems humorous. I shall never forget how 
the passengers laughed when the captain told 
them why he had had to reverse his engines to 
keep from crushing the frail Chinese sampan. 
But suddenly the thought came to one of the pas- 
sengers; that to the poor Chinaman the fear 
which made him do that foolish thing and the 
fear which made him take that awful risk was 
very real. 

''Under God, the poor Devils must have an 
awful life if they have such a fear as that in 
their souls day and night!" said an Englishman. 

"They never start out for a day's work that 
they are not haunted every minute of that day 
by a thousand devils, ill-omens, and bad spirits 
which are constantly hovering about to leap on 
them and kill them!'' said a missionary. ''The 
whole Orient is full of the thought of fear!" 

This missionary was right. Paul Hutchinson, 
Editor of the Chinese Christian Advocate and 
one of the real literary men of the Americans 
who are permanent residents of Shanghai, told me 
of a Chinese boy who was graduating from a 
Christian College in Nanking. The boy had been 
for four years under the influence of Americans. 
He could speak good English. He was about 



66 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

ready to go to America to school when he had 
completed his work at Nanking. 

He, with a younger brother, was at home for 
the Christmas vacation. On the way back to 
college the younger brother fell overboard into 
the river. The older brother was not a coward. 
Everybody will testify to that. In fact he was 
unusually courageous. But in spite of the fact 
that his puny brother was able to swim to the side 
of the small boat, and in spite of the fact that he 
begged his older and stronger brother to pull him 
back into the boat, that older brother refused to 
do so. 

"Why?" 

Mr. Hutchinson says that the English teacher 
heard the tale in terror, but that the brother took 
it as a matter of course, explaining that the River 
Devil would most certainly have caught and 
dragged into the water, any person who should 
have dared to attempt a rescue of his brother. 

It is an established thing in China; that if a 
native falls into the river, he never gets out unless 
he pulls himself out. Nobody will help him, for 
if they do,, that will incur the wrath of the River 
God and the rescuer also will be dragged down 
to his death. 

It is assumed that if a person falls into the 
river that is the River God pulling him in. 



% 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FEAR 67 

The constant fear of this River God is so deep- 
ly intrenched in these poor souls that they take 
no pleasure on the water and they carry their 
sense of fear to such an extent that they will not 
even attempt a rescue of their own babies or loved 
ones if these happen to fall into the water. 

Mr. Hutchinson calls attention to Dr. E. D. 
Soper's book "The Faiths of Mankind" in which 
there is an entire chapter called 'Where Fear 
Holds Sway." 

"Where is it that fear holds sway?" the reader 
asks. 

The answer is, "In the Orient" ! 

Yes,, the whole Orient is one great gallery of 
dim, uncertain, weird, mysterious Flash-lights of 
Fear. 

Paul Hutchinson says : 

"It is impossible for the Westerner to conceive such 
an atmosphere until he has lived in it. In fact he may 
live in it for years and never realize the hold which it has 
upon his native neighbors. But it is no exaggeration to 
say that, to the average Chinese, the air is peopled with 
countless spirits, most of them malignant, all attempting 
to do him harm. Even a catalogue of the devils, such as 
have been named by the scholarly Jesuit, Father Dore, 
is too long for the limits of this article. But there they 
are, millions of them. They hover around every motion 
of every waking hour, and they enter the sanctity of sleep. 
An intricate system of circumnavigating them, that makes 
the streets twist in a fashion to daze Boston's legendary 
cow and puts walls in front of doors to belie the hos- 
pitality within, runs through the social order." 



68 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

This fear is even expressed in Chinese archi- 
tecture. 

"Why is that strange wall built in front of 
every household door and even before the Tem- 
ples ?" I asked a friend in China. 

"It is put there to fool the devils. They will see 
that wall and think that there is no door and then 
will go away and not bother that house any 
more," I was told. 

The very architecture of the Chinese home is 
to keep the devils out. The strange curves with 
the graceful upward sweep that makes the roofs 
so beautiful to American eyes is for the purpose 
of throwing devils of the air off the track. They 
will come down from the skies and start down the 
curve of the roofs but will be turned back into 
the skies again by the upward slant of the twisted 
roofs. 

It was this same terrible sense of fear which 
developed the old surgical system that the Ko- 
reans and Chinese used before the arrival of the 
missionaries. 

"Do you see these needles?" an American 
surgeon in Korea asked me one day, as he pointed 
to about a hundred of the most horrible looking 
copper and brass needles lying on a stand. 

"Yes," I admitted, mystified. 

"I have taken every one of them out of the 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FEAR 69 

bodies of human beings on whom I have operated 
here in the hospital." 

''Where did you find them?" 

"In between the bowels, in the muscles, in the 
organs of the body, and one in the heart of a man 
who came to me because he couldn't breathe very 
well." 

''No wonder the fellow couldn't breathe. I 
don't think I could myself if I had a needle in my 
blood-pump !" I said with a smile. 

"These fancy needles that the old Korean doc- 
tors thought a good deal of they put a handle on," 
he continued. 

"What was that for?" 

"So they wouldn't lose their needles in a body. 
The other, or common needles, they just stuck 
into the body wherever the wound or sore place 
was and left them there." 

"And what, may I ask, was the idea of this 
playful Korean surgery! Was it something like 
our 'button, button, whose got the button?'" 

"No, the idea was that there were devils in the 
wound. If it was a swelling there was a devil in 
that swelling. If it was typhoid fever, and there 
was pain in the bowels, there was a devil in the 
inward parts affected, and so, after carefully 
sterilizing the needle by running it through his 
long, black, greasy hair, the native doctor would 



70 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

run it into the affected part of the body to kill 
the devil or let it escape from, the body/' 

"The old idea of a fear religion, a fear social 
life, a fear family life and a fear surgery pre- 
vails in Korea as it does in China?" I said by 
way of a question. 

"It prevails everywhere in the Orient. To me 
it is the most awful thing about working out here. 
The awful sense of constant fear that is on the 
people always and everywhere." 

Pounded-up claws of a tiger; the red horn of a 
deer; pulverized fish bones; roots of trees, pigs' 
eyes; and a thousand poisons and fear-remedies 
make up the medical history of the Oriental doc- 
tor. 

"Why do they kill girl babies?" 

"Fear!" 

"Fear of what?" 

"Fear of devils ! The devils will be displeased if 
a girl baby is born. Therefore kill the baby. 

"Throw the babies out on the ground in the 
graveyards. Let the dogs eat the babies." 

I heard the dogs howling in a cemetery one 
night about two o'clock in the morning as I was 
coming through the thousands of little conical 
mounds, with here and there an unburied coffin. 

"The dogs are having a baby feast to-night," 
said an old missionary. 

"Why?" 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FEAR 71 

"To appease the devils/' 

"My God man; you don't mean that they let 
the dogs eat their babies because they are afraid 
of the devil ?" I cried. 

"I mean just that/' replied the missionary. 

"Fear! Fear! Fear! Everywhere. Fear by 
night and fear by day. They never escape it. It 
is fear that makes them worship their ancestors. 
It is fear that makes them, worship idols. It is 
fear that makes them kill their girl babies. It is 
fear that makes them build their little narrow 
winding streets, which after a while must become 
so filthy; fear that if they do not, the devils will 
find them; and if they do build their streets nar- 
row and winding the devils will get lost searching 
for them. Oh, God, fear, fear, everywhere ! The 
Orient is full of a terrible and a constant fear!" 

I looked at my friend astonished. He seldom 
went into such emotional outbursts. He was 
judicial, calm, poised; some said, cold. But this 
constant sense of fear that was upon the people 
had finally broken down his reserve of poise. 

"The chimneys are beautiful. See that beauti- 
ful upward dip in the architecture. They are like 
the roofs,," I said. 

"But that beautiful, symmetrical development 
did not come out of a sense of beauty. It came 
to fool the devils just as we have said of the roofs. 
The devils will glide off into space and will never 



72 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

be able to get down the chimneys." It is so in 
other Oriental countries. 

• ••••• 

The same is true in the Philippine Islands. 
The whole fabric of human life is permeated with 
the black thread of fear. 

It is true of China and Korea; it is true of 
Borneo to a marked degree ; and it is true of that 
great mass of conglomerate humanity that we 
think of as India. 

These and other flash-lights of fear remain, 
and shall remain forever in my mind. But of a 
fifty thousand mile trip among hundreds of mil- 
lions of human beings; pictures of fear stand out, 
blurred here and there ; but clear enough in out- 
line so that I can still see the human faces against 
a background of midnight darkness. 

Three pictures are clearer than the others. 
Perhaps it was because the flash that focused 
them on the plate of my mind was stronger. Per- 
haps it was, that the plate of my soul was more 
sensitive the days these impressions were focused. 
But they stand out; three flash-lights of fear 
Vbove all: 

One was told me by Zela Wiltsie Worley, a 
college girl, now a missionary's wife, who has 
known what it means to lie on the floor of her 
home an entire morning with machine gun bullets 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FEAR 73 

crashing through her home, between the fire of 
two revolutionary armies. 

"I was talking with my Amah — she is the girl 
who cares for our children/' said Mrs. Worley. 

I nodded that I understood that. 

"We were bathing the baby — our first wee 
kiddie — and the Amah seemed to have an unusual 
inclination to talk. I had been joking with her 
and asked her if she did not want to buy Clara 
Gene. In fun we started the characteristic 
Chinese haggling over price, she trying to 'jew' 
me up and I trying to 'jew' her down. 

" 'Oh !' she said, 'girl babies are very expensive 
the last two or three years. Now you have to pay 
over ten dollars to get a nice fat one ! Before that, 
if you did not drown them, you had an awfully 
hard time to gtt rid of them. There was a man 
in our town to whom we took the babies — the girl 
babies I mean. He would go up and down the 
streets with them and sell them to any one who 
would give him a chicken and a bowl of rice in 
return.' 

" 'But do they drown the girl babies now ?' I 
asked the Amah. 

" 'Oh, yes, of course, if you already have one 
or two boys. You know, in my village I am the 
only Christian. My own family and the rest of 
the village worship idols. They are afraid of 
their gods. They do not know any better. Why 



74 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

my sister almost drowned my second little boy 
by mistake. He had just arrived and she thought 
that he was a girl, and had already stuck his head 
down in a pail of water when I rescued him.' 

^' 'But who usually kills the girl babies?' I 
asked. 'Surely not the mother?' 

" 'Yes, she does. She is so afraid when she 
finds it is only a girl, afraid that the gods will be 
angry because she has brought another girl into 
the world, that she kills it 1' 

" 'Do they bury it then?' 

"'Sometimes they wrap it up, and throw it 
under a pile of rubbish. You know, we do not 
have coffins made for any of our babies who die 
before they have had their first teeth! I have 
seen so many babies drowned, Mrs. Worley. I 
never did like it. They cry so !' 

"Then I inquired of our Chinese teacher's wife 
if she knew of girl baby killing still going on in 
China. 

" 'Just last week,' this teacher's wife said in 
answer to my inquiry, 'the woman next door went 
back to her village two miles from here and she 
saw her own sister drown a baby while she was 
there.' 

"I asked an English missionary if she knew 
that this fearful custom was still prevalent over 
most of China with its more than four hundred 
million souls. 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FEAR 75 

"She told me that it was the custom in Ning- 
daik for the women just to throw the girl babies 
under their beds, and they would ^be gone in a 
day or two/ 

"And it is all because of their awful fear that 
the gods will be displeased if they give birth to a 
girl baby!" 

The second outstanding flash-light of fear 
comes from. Java. 

In the chapter on Physical Flash-lights I have 
described the old volcano of Bromo. It is a ter- 
rible thing to look into. Great fissures in the 
earth, belch thunder, sulphur, fire, and lava. 
Great rocks as large as wagons shoot into the 
air to the rim of the two hundred-foot crater, and 
then drop back with a crash. 

For centuries, and even in these days, clandes- 
tinely; I am told by men whom I trust; the most 
beautiful maiden of a certain tribe among the 
Javanese; and some of the most beautiful women 
I saw in the Orient were those soft-skinned, soft- 
voiced,, easy-moving, graceful-limbed, swaying- 
bodied; brown skinned women of Java; she, the 
fairest of the tribe is taken; and with her the 
strongest limbed youth ; he of the fibered muscles ; 
he of the iron biceps ; he of the clean skin ; and the 
two of them are tossed into the belching fiery 
crater of old Bromo. 

"Why?" I asked. 



76 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

"They think that in that way, they may pro- 
pitiate the gods of the volcano. Their hearts are 
constantly filled with fear lest the gods of the 
volcano become angry and destroy them/' said the 
missionary. 

Then he told me of a trip that they made a year 
before to the top of one of the most inaccessible 
volcanoes which was then in constant eruption. 

"We had a hard time getting native guides. 
Finally we succeeded. We had to travel fifty 
miles before we reached the mountain. Then we 
climbed five miles up its steep side, cutting our 
own trail as we made our way through the tropi- 
cal jungle. At last we reached the timber. But 
before we entered the forest one of the guides 
came to me and, with the most pitiable and trem- 
bling fear in his voice and face, begged us white 
people not to say anything disrespectful of the 
mountain; not to joke and laugh, and not to 
sing; for that would make the mountain angry, 
and we would all be killed. 

"I saw that he was in deadly earnest, and, 
while I wanted to laugh I looked as solemn as I 
could, for there was such terror in his face, I 
knew that if I laughed he Vv^ould turn and run 
back to civilization. 

"An hour later we reached the timber line. 
Before we entered it the first boy fell flat on his 
face and prayed to the god of the mountain ask- 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FEAR 77 

ing that god not to hurt them. Then the next boy 
did likewise; then the third and the fourth and 
the fifth! 

"Their faces were almost white with fear when 
we missionaries did not pray. It filled them with 
terror V^ 

And the last Flash-light of Fear is that of the 
baby in Medan. The Priest lived across the way 
in a temple. 

The baby was sick with whooping-cough. It 
was the usual, simple case of baby sickness that 
American babies all have, and which is not taken 
seriously here by either doctor or mother. 

The mother took the baby to the priest. 

The priest took a red hot iron; laid the baby 
on the church altar and ran the iron across its 
neck, and then across its breast and then across 
its little stomach. Then he laid it on the front 
steps of the temple. 

The baby died after a few hours spent in ter- 
rible pain. 

Hate the Priest? 

No! 

Despise the mother ? 

No! 

Pity them! 

The priest was honest and the mother was hon- 
est. They were doing the best thing for the baby 



78 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

that either of them knew. They knew that the 
baby had a devil in its Httle body and they were 
merely trying to drive that devil out of its body. 

Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear of devils in the 
home, lurking in the shadows of night and in the 
light of day; lurking in the bodies of babies; 
devils everywhere — always. 

These are the Flash-lights of Fear! 

And like unto them are the pictures of Fright- 
fulness which I have set down in the next chapter. 



CHAPTER V 

FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIGHTFULNESS 

THE Jap is the slant-eyed Hun of the Orient. 
He has a slant-eyed ethics, a slant-eyed 
morality, a slant-eyed honesty, a slant-eyed social 
consciousness ; a slant-eyed ambition, a slant-eyed 
military system; and a slant-eyed mind!" said 
Peter Clarke Macfarlane, the well-known author 
and lecturer, one day when I was interviewing 
him on the Japanese question. 

"That's pretty strong, Mr. Macfarlane, in the 
light of your usual conservatism," I commented. 

'T say it carefully and after much thought. It 
is said to stay said so far, as I am concerned," 
he added with finality. 

This was also my own opinion, after spending 
three months in Japan and Korea, another month 
in China; and another month or two in Manila; 
catching the angle of Japanese leadership from 
every slant. 

And after due consideration, and after a year 
to think it over carefully, I am here to say, that 
I never saw, or heard of anything worse happen- 
ing in Belgium under German rule than that 

79 



I 

80 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS ; 

which I saw and heard of happening under \ 

Japanese rule in Korea, Siberia and Formosa, \ 

while I was in the Orient. i 

Suffice it is to say, at this point, that the i 

Japanese is hated by the whole Orient. I do not { 

believe that the German Hun in his worst day i 

was ever hated more unanimously for his inhu- i 

man practices than is the Jap Hun hated by the i 

whole Orient to-day. ,■ 

"Is it getting better or worse?" I am asked i 

constantly. — i 

"Worse!'' I reply, and this reply is backed up 
by interviews I have had with returned Korean 

missionaries. : 

I found the Taoanese scorned and hated from 

one end of the Orient to the other. As far south J 

as Java, as far east as the Suez ; as far north as i 

the uttermost reaches of Manchuria and Siberia; j 

as far this direction as Hawaii. j 

For instance, after I had been away from ] 

Korea for six months and had come back to I 

America I met a most conservative missionary in | 

the Romona Hotel in San Francisco. The last ] 

time previous to that meeting that I had seen him i 

v/as in Korea itself. i 

I said to him "Are things better or worse in I 

Korea?" \ 

His reply was, "Worse than they have ever | 

been; generally speaking!" I have no intention ' 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIGHTFULNESS 81 

and no desire to further augment ill feeling be- 
tween America and Japan. In fact I do not fear 
anything like war in that direction; but I do have 
an intense feeling of responsibility about telling 
my readers the plain and simple truth that the 
whole Far Eastern world hates Japan. 

If that thought itself can get into the mind of 
America, this country will understand, at least, 
that there is some fault that lies back in the 
Japanese military policy and character itself. It 
hardly seems possible, with ten races and five 
different countries hating Japan ; that Japan her- 
self is not mostly to blame. When a matter of 
hatred is so unanimous among all races in that 
part of the world, it is likely that the fault lies 
with the race and nation which has the hatred of 
so many types of people focused on its actions. 

While I was in Java some high dignitaries in 
the Japanese Navy arrived in Batavia. The 
Chinese Coolies who live in Batavia absolutely 
refused to carry any Japanese officers or sailors 
in their Rickshas. It was a striking indictment of 
the Japanese nation. 

In Singapore the distrust and hatred of the 
Japanese is unanimous. In the Philippines it is 
the same. In Hongkong you see few Japanese. 
They are not wanted and they are not trusted. 
In Shanghai, and Peking it is the same. The 
Student Movement, one of the most powerful 



82 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

weapons that has ever arisen in any nation in the 
world, has focused the Chinese sentiment against 
selfish Japanese aggression in China. 

The Japanese officials laughed at the Student 
Boycott of Japanese goods when it first started. 
But in a year they were trembling in the face of 
that boycott. I was in Tientsin, and Peking dur- 
ing the days of the Student Street Demonstra- 
tions. They were like American demonstrations. 

Keen, alert, intelligent Chinese boys addressed 
the crowds admonishing them not to buy Japanese 
goods in Chinese shops. The pressure became so 
strong that all Chinese merchants from the lowest 
shopkeeper up to the owner of the great chain 
stores,, like our Woolworth institutions, put away 
Japanese-made goods and refused to sell them. 

I took dinner in Shanghai with one of the 
foremost merchant princes of China and said, 
"Are you selling any Japanese-made goods ?'' 

"I certainly am not. I am not powerful enough 
with all my millions of money and all of my chain 
of stores to take such a chance as that. I have 
put all of my Japanese goods in the cellar." 

The Boycott against Japanese goods in China 
became so powerful that in Tientsin, while I was 
there, the Japanese Consul complained bitterly to 
the Governor of the Province and the Governor 
who was said to be under the influence of Japan- 
ese money, arrested a lot of students. There was 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIGHTFULNESS 83 

one of the most determined and terrible riots that 
I have ever seen. It was war. It was not like 
any mild American riot. It was war to the death. 
Several students were killed and finally the pres- 
sure was so strong that even this Japanese Agent 
was compelled to release the imprisoned students. 
I shall quote from an editorial that I was asked 
to write for the Peking Leader during mv stay 
in China: 

The weapon which most worries the Japanese 
I should say, is the boycott that the Students 
Movement has inaugurated. The Japanese Gov- 
ernment never had anything that quite worried it 
so much. It is a weapon that is worth a thousand 
battleships, or fifty divisions of soldiers. It is a 
weapon that will, if continuously, and consistently 
and faithfully used, bring a money-loving nation, 
like Japan to her knees, and send her finally, 
scurrying like a whipped cur, with her tail be- 
tween her legs back home where she belongs. 

I talked with a ragged Chinese boy through an 
interpreter just to find what his reactions to the 
Japanese were. He was a beggar. He said, ''The 
Japanese has a heart like a dog and a liver like a 
wolf." 

I quote again from the editorial in the Peking 
Leader: 

All day I have been on the streets of Peking 
listening to groups of students discussing the all 



84 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

absorbing question of the Boycott. I have not 
understood the characters printed on their ban- 
ners, but I have understood the light in Young 
China's eyes. I can understand that language 
and that light, for it is the language and the light 
of freedom, justice, liberty! I am an American. 
I understand that light when I see it ; and I know 
also; that it is a light that can never be snuffed 
out. It is a light that prison walls cannot hide 
and that the brute hand of the invader cannot 
dim. 

"And what are they protesting against?" is the 
question asked. 

Primarily against the Japanese control of 
Shantung. Secondarily, against a type of civili- 
zation which Japan represents ; a civilization that 
uses the weapons of frightfulness to accomplish 
its ends; a civilization that steals a nation like 
Korea, compelling the abdication of a weak Em- 
peror at the- point of the bayonet; and then using 
the avowed method of extermination to deplete a 
subjected nation. The whole Orient knows Japan 
and knows the methods that Japan has used and 
is using in conquered territory. It is a continuous 
and continual policy of extermination, frightful- 
ness, and assimilation. This is the underlying 
cause of the hatred of the whole Orient and the 
Far and Near East against Japan; and this is 
the fundamental reason for the Students' Boy- 
cott of Japanese goods in China. 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FKIGHTFULNESS 85 

One might devote an entire book to narrations 
of frightful cruelties perpetrated by Japanese on 
Koreans, Siberians and Formosans; but that 
would not be so strong as the setting forth of the 
underlying ethical reasons for this universal 
hatred in which Japan is held. 

However it might be quite honest and fair for 
this writer to set down here several acts of fright- 
fulness that came under his own personal obser- 
vation merely as casual illustrations of that which 
is going on all the time. 

One day I was walking with a missionary's wife 
through the streets of Seoul. There was an exca- 
vation being made and a little railroad track was 
being run along this excavation. A Korean boy 
had been set to guard this track to keep folks 
from getting hurt when the dump car came down 
its steep grade. He had been ordered by his 
Japanese employers to stop all passage when the 
signal was given. 

We were walking along whein this Korean 
stopped an ordinary Japanese civilian. He was 
of the low-browed type; mentally deficient I 
should say; but quite the average type that is 
used by Japan to settle these conquered coun- 
tries. 

The Korean held up his hands in warning. 

The Japanese stooped over, picked up a stone 
as large as a cabbage head and,, with only a space 



S6 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

of two feet between himself and the Korean, 
threw it with all his force against the cheek of 
the Korean and smashed his jaw in, tearing his 
ear off, breaking his jaw bone, and lacerating his 
face fearfully. It was one of the most inhuman 
things that I have ever seen done. 

The missionary woman said to the Korean 
when the Jap ran; "Why do you not report this 
to the Japanese poHce?'' 

"It would do no good. They would give no 
justice to me, and I would be hounded to my death 
for reporting it." 

One evening with a friend I had been speaking 
in Pyeng Yang. It was midnight one Sunday 
and we were waiting for a train down to Seoul. 
As we stood on the platform waiting; a north- 
bound train came in. It stopped. As it stopped 
several Japanese train boys got off of the train. 
An old white-haired Korean gentleman, about 
seventy-five years of age, stood on the platform 
waiting for the train. He was intelligent looking; 
poised; and well-dressed in the usual immacu- 
lately white robes. 

A fifteen-year old Japanese train boy, seeing 
him standing there, deliberately ran out of his 
way, lowered his shoulders like a football charger 
and ran squarely into the old man, knocking him, 
down to the platform and ran on with a laugh 
and some muttered Japanese words. 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIGHTFULNESS 87 

The dignified Korean gentleman got up, 
brushed the dirt from his clothes; did not even 
deign to glance at the offending boy ; and walked 
on as if nothing had happened. 

This scene illustrates two things: First, the 
superiority of the Korean mind and character to 
that of the Japanese. This is one of the causes of 
the extreme frightfulness pursued by the Jap- 
anese. They instinctively feel the superiority of 
their captives. It is not the first time in history 
that a lesser nation has conquered a superior 
people. 

This superiority in soul-stuff that the Korean 
has over that of the Japanese is recognized imme- 
diately by all Europeans and Americans who be- 
come, even in the least bit, familiar with the two 
peoples. The sympathy of Christian civilizations 
is with the Koreans immediately. 

The other thing that this simple scene illus- 
trates, is the spirit of ruthless cruelty and fright- 
fulness that is bred in the very soul of the youth 
of Japan toward the Koreans. Even the train- 
boys can do a thing like that without fear of 
punishment. 

The first day that we were in Seoul, the 
capital city of Korea,, Pat McConnell and myself 
were walking down the main street of this inter- 
esting city toward the depot. Parallel with us 
marched a squad of Japanese soldiers. In front 



88 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

of them, going the same direction, was a poor 
Korean workman pushing- a small cart that looked 
like our American wheelbarrow. 

The Japanese soldiers were in formation and 
marchins: in the middle of a wide street. But de- 
liberately ; evidently with orders from their officer 
in charge; they edged over to that side of the 
street where the Korean was walking and pushed 
him into the curb stone, kicking his barrow as 
they passed, although this meant a useless swerv- 
ing of, at least, fifteen feet out of their course to 
do so. It was a case of deliberate brutality. 

"Korea is a land of trails and terraces," said a 
prominent missionary in that fair spot to me one 
day as we were riding from Fusan to Seoul. 

*'And terror," added another traveler from 
America. "It is a land of trails, terraces, and 
terror!" 

One day a friend of mine was begging Baron 
Saito, the present Governor-General of Korea, to 
stop the cruelties of the Japanese gendarmes in 
villages in northern Korea. The Baron asked for 
the names of those who had given the missionary 
his information about the cruelties and he refused 
to give them. 

"Why should you not give them?" asked Baron 
Saito. 

"Because they would be killed for complain- 
ing," said the missionary. 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIGHTFULNESS 89 

Then he told Governor-General Saito how he 
had once complained to the police department 
when a father and son were cruelly beaten in 
prison. 

"Give me their names," said the gendarme. 

"I will if you will give me a promise that they 
will be protected." 

"No ! I cannot do that ! The gendarmes are 
very revengeful !" 

I know personally of a Korean preacher who 
has done no greater crime than to attend a meet- 
ing at a dinner given for released Korean pris- 
oners. He was arrested and kept in jail for three 
days, just for attending that dinner. 

Another preacher with whom I talked was 
suspected of collecting money eight months after 
the March Independence Movement. When he 
heard that the Japanese police were coming for 
him he fled. This angered the police. They ap- 
peared the next morning at three o'clock at his 
home. There were only the mother and a twelve- 
year-old daughter left. First the gendarmes 
burst in the frail doors with the butts of their 
rifles,, and then from three o'clock in the m.orning 
until daylight, they beat and tortured those two 
helpless Christian Korean women ; kicking them 
all over the house until they were unconscious. 
These two Korean women were in bed for two 
weeks because of that night's experience and 



90 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

were not able to walk for a much longer period 
than that. ' 

And these women were educated, cultured 
women. They had committed no crime. It was 
simply because they did not know where the 
father was. 

Later the father and son were arrested. They 
were beaten cruelly in the process of arrest al- 
though they offered no resistance. The son later 
said to me, "I could stand it to be beaten myself 
and even to see my father beaten but the unbear- 
ably cruel thing was to know that they had beaten 
my innocent mother and sister when no man was 
there to protect them.'' 

I cite this instance because it happened eight 
months after the Independence Movement, and 
three months after the so-called reform Govern- 
ment of Baron Saito had been in effect and after 
the Japanese Press had said to the world that all 
cruelties had ceased. 

A case of frightfulness that was called to my 
attention; which seemed to me to be the very 
essence of cruelty was that of the moral terroriz- 
ing of an educated Korean Pastor, whom the 
police merely suspected of having had something 
to do with the Independence Movement. They 
had no direct evidence but submitted him to 
months of moral terrorizing which was the worst 
I have ever heard of. 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIGHTFULNESS 91 

For months at a stretch they would suddenly 
appear outside of his home and thrust their bayo- 
nets through his doors. Then they would go 
away without saying a word. He had absolutely 
no redress. If he had complained, he would have 
been thrown into prison. 

One of the most reliable missionaries that I met 
in Korea told me of how one morning the police- 
men came to a church in northern Korea during 
the hour of service. They broke eighty windows, 
arrested fourteen men, smashed the little organ 
with their gun butts, smashed a beautiful lamp, 
tore up the mat seats from the floors, and burned 
them in front of the church. 

At the funeral service of another young Ko- 
rean preacher, Pak Suk Han in Pyeng Yang, hun- 
dreds of Japanese soldiers appeared with drawn 
bayonets just to terrorize the people. The church 
was full of Japanese officers with drawn swords. 

"What would have happened if somebody in a 
fit of patriotism had shouted 'Mansei'?'' I asked. 

"We would have been killed instantly!" said 
the missionary soberly. 'T was afraid of that!" 

A prominent, educated and English-speaking 
Korean official, told me that in a conversation 
with a high Japanese official that that particular 
Japanese had said "Our plan will be to assimilate 
the Korean people !" 

"But that will be impossible. There are twenty 



92 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

million of us. You will find that a hard thing 
to do !" said this Korean. 

The Japanese official smiled and said signifi- 
cantly, "We know the way !" 

The Korean knew what that meant. It meant 
extermination; extermination in every way pos- 
sible. It meant extermination by introducing 
prostitution in Korea. This has been done. 
Korea never had any legalized prostitution. 
Korea never knew what the Red Light Section 
meant. Japan's first move was to introduce that. 
She sent her diseased women to Korea. She 
made prostitution ridiculously cheap; fifty sen; 
which is twenty-five cents in American money. 

"Why?" 

It is one of her ways of assimilation which 
means extermination and she has already shot 
venereal disease rates up to an alarming state 
in Korea. 

Her next step in fright fulness was to intro- 
duce opium, Japanese Agents raise thousands of 
acres of Opium in Korea and sell it. This is an- 
other one of her steps in the process of assimila- 
tion or extermination. 

Japan has stolen from poor Koreans their rice 
lands and their coal beds. The process is for a 
Japanese company to buy the water sources of 
the rice paddies below and then refuse to let the 
Koreans have water for his rice fields. This is 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIGHTFULNESS 93 

another step in frightfulness that will finally ex- 
terminate the Korean if it keeps up long- enough. 

The recent massacre of Koreans in Manchuria 
by Japanese soldiers illustrate the Japanese spirit. 

This same policy of frightfulness is carried on 
in Formosa and in Siberia and wherever the Jap- 
anese army and gendarme system has authority. 
It is worse than anything that the Germans ever 
did in France or Belgium. It has its only parallel 
in the dark ages. 

I told Baron Saito, Governor-General of Korea 
this in an interview. He wanted to know what 
America thought of Japan's rule in Korea. I 
said: "America and the whole civilized world is 
stirred with indignation at the Japanese rule in 
Korea. There has been nothing like it since the 
dark ages.'' Then I read him a quotation from 
an editorial in Zion's Herald, a church paper 
published in Boston, with virtually those words 
in it. 

• ••••• 

My friend, whom I met first in France, when 
he came back from, France was sent to Siberia as 
a Captain in the American Army. 

I met him in Manila just after he had returned 
from Siberia. He, in common with all Americans 
who had seen the Japanese methods of frightful- 
ness in Siberia, was filled with hatred. 

"One night," he said, "a company of Japanese 



94 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

soldiers entered the little village six hundred 
miles north of Vladivostok where we were lo- 
cated. They announced that they were hunting 
for Bolsheviks. 

"They did not find any in the little village, al- 
though they ruthlessly broke down every door of 
every home in that village. Then they went out 
to a sawmill about three miles from town and 
brought in five boys between the ages of twelve 
and eighteen. 

"After torturing these boys in an old box car 
for two days, hanging them up by the thumbs 
with their arms behind their backs until they were 
unconscious; and then forcing salt water, hot 
water, cold water, and water with pepper in it 
down their nostrils, alternately ; and other added 
cruelties ; they announced to the village that they 
would release them that night on the public 
square." 

"Did they do it ?'' I asked anxiously, for I was 
stirred to my soul's depths with his narration of 
cruelties in Siberia. 

"Yes, they released them ; in this way : 

"They called all the friends and families of the 
prisoners together on the public square. Then 
they dug five graves. Then five Japanese officers 
came stalking across the public square, whisking 
at the thistle-tops with swords as they came ; and 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIGHTFULNESS 95 

then walked up to these innocent Russian boys, 
and whacked off their heads. 

''Had they been tried?" I asked indignantly. 

''They had been given no trial. They were 
mere boys,, who, probably, didn't even know what 
the word Bolshevik meant. It was the worst 
illustration of fright fulness that I ever saw, al- 
though it was a common thing for the Japanese 
troops to go through the country upsetting the 
barrels of honey that the poor peasants were sav- 
ing up for the long winters; rooting up their 
young potatoes ; cutting the throats of their colts 
and cattle, and ravishing the land." 

"How could you stand it?" 

"We couldn't stand it. I had to fight to keep 
my company of Americans from sailing into them 
with fists and bayonets. It would have meant 
war. So I sent word back to headquarters that 
we were out of provisions and we were called back 
to Vladivostok." 

Can this scene be duplicated in Formosa and 
Korea, where the Japanese hold sway ? 

It can. 

During the Independence Movement in Korea 
this thing happened: All of the Korean Chris- 
tians had been asked to assemble in a church for 
a meeting. When they were all in the church, 
the Japanese gendarme set fire to the church and 
then fired into it, killing every man. 



96 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

A woman, big with child, came running toward 
the church having heard the shooting and know- 
ing that her husband was within. 

A big, burly Japanese pushed her back. 

"What do you want?" he cried in Korean. 

"I want to go in there. My husband is there/' 
she cried in terror. 

"But you will be killed if you go in there!" 

"I don't care! I want to die if he is to die!" 

"All right! You shall have your wish!" said 
the Japanese, and pulling out his sword, cut off 
her head, killing her instantly. She fell at his 
feet with her unborn child ; and he laughed aloud 
at the spectacle. 

This is Japanese frightfulness and it can be 
duplicated by many missionaries in Korea if they 
dared to speak. 

But the minute they speak and tell the truth 
that minute they are sent home from their life 
work. They realize that this leaves the Koreans 
to the utter and awful cruelties of the barbarous 
Japanese, and because of this, in spite of their 
indignation they hold their tongues for the larger 
good. But they eagerly give the facts to those of 
us who are coming back to America so that 
America in turn may know what is going on in 
Korea. That is the only hope; that the indigna- 
tion of a righteous world, without war, may bring 
pressure to bear on Japan to stop these terrible 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIGHTFULNESS 97 

cruelties and tortures; this unutterable fright- 
fulness. This is the hope of the missionaries ; this 
is the only hope of the Koreans ! 

• ••••• 

I don't know whether or not it was because I 
had been listening for so long to the most brutal 
stories of Japanese treatment of Korean men, 
women and children ; with murder, rapine, burn- 
ing of homes, especially Christian homes ; beating 
of a mother and her twelve-year-old girl from 
three in the morning until eight to make them 
reveal the hiding-place of their preacher daddy, 
that the crimson, blood-red sunset I witnessed on 
my last night in Korea seemed to me like a "sun- 
set of crimson wounds/' All I know is that it 
happened in Korea while I was there, and that my 
soul had been, for a solid month, stirred to the 
depths of its righteous wrath over the things that 
I had heard first-hand from human lips. 

But there it was. The sky was blood-red. At 
first it was black, a somber black. Not a coal- 
black but a slate black. Then suddenly just at 
the edge of the horizon a crack began to appear. 
It was a slit of blood. It looked more like a 
wound than anything else I ever saw. The slit 
of blood grew larger and larger in the slate-black 
clouds. 

Then suddenly all over the horizon these 
wounds began to break through the mass of black 



98 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

clouds. Some of these slits were horizontal slits, 
and some of them ran in graceful curves. Some 
of them looked as if a bayonet had been lunged 
into the body of that somber cloud and a great 
crimson gash was made with ragged edges as big 
as a house. Then it looked as if some ruthless 
Japanese gendarme had taken his sword and 
slashed a rip in the abdomen of that sky; and 
from side to side like a crescent moon appeared 
this great crimson wound. 

I had never seen a sunset just like it. But there 
it was. It seemed that there was back of that 
great black cloud a blood-red planet, pouring its 
crimson tides like a great waterfall down back of 
that slate-black mass until finally the curtain of 
black began to tear, and the blood poured through 
to run along the horizon, and splash against the 
clouds, and slit its way like wounds through the 
clouds of night. 

And I thought of something else. I thought 
how a Man once was crucified. I thought how 
dark the skies were on that afternoon. I thought 
how slate-colored and somber all life seemed, 
especially to that little group of disciples. I 
thought of the wounds in His hands and feet and 
side. I thought of the wounds the thorns in His 
crown made, and of the blood that ran over His 
face. I could see Him there back of that cloud 
in Korea. I could see His Christian people be- 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIGHTFULNESS 99 

ing crucified again because of their religion. 
I could see Japanese bayonets thrust into His 
side and Japanese nails through His feet and 
His hands. I could see a Japanese crown of 
thorns on His head because He said, "Inasmuch 
as ye have done it unto one of the least of these 
my brethren ye have done it unto me." And I 
could see the blood of his v^ounds breaking 
through that nation's clouds on that wonder eve- 
ning of the "sunset of wounds" back of the Ko- 
rean mountains in December, 



CHAPTER VI 

FEMININE FLASH-LIGHTS 

ORIENTAL women are fascinating to Occi- 
dental men," said a newspaper reporter in a 
Shanghai hotel lobby, a year ago. 

'^All women are fascinating to Occidental men. 
Take the French girls and the way they captured 
our American soldiers; of course, these brown- 
eyed, brown-skinned, graceful, mysterious " 

"It's just as I said," replied the first speaker 
interrupting the second speaker, "Oriental girls 
are more fascinating to Occidental men than 
white girls." 

"Yes — I guess you are right, when we get 
down to the honest to goodness truth of the 
thing," said an American oil man. "Take that 
Javanese girl who knocked at the door of my 
room; or take that half-breed Malay girl we met 
on the ship between Singapore and Batavia; or 
that little red-cheeked Japanese girl in Tokyo; 
or that Spanish brunette in Manila ; or — Oh, Boy ! 
Do you remember that Chinese half-breed, with 
English blood in her veins and an English educa- 
tion in her brain and Paris clothes on her back, 

lOI 



102 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

and American pep in her eyes, and Japanese silk 
stocking's on her " 

"Come on ! Come on ! We didn't call on you 
for a lecture on Oriental girls whom you have 
met," said the first speaker. 

Then a bell boy paged me and I lost the rest of 
the conversation. 

But this dialogue set me to thinking on the 
various types of fascinating Oriental women; the 
standing they have in the world; and the status of 
their living. 

There were the Japanese women; beautiful, 
graceful, red-cheeked, small of stature, wistful- 
eyed, colorfully dressed; always smiling slaves to 
their men. 

The well-trained Geisha girl has,, for centuries, 
because of her superior education, received the 
confidences of Japanese men; while a Japanese 
man would scorn to talk things over with his 
wife. 

There was the banquet we attended at the 
Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Mr. Uchida, the Min- 
ister of Foreign Affairs, and many of the high 
officials of Japan were present with their wives. 
Several members of the House of Parliament 
were present as well as the Secretary to Mr. 
Hara, the Prime Minister. Each of these great 
leaders of Japan had his wife by his side at the 
banquet table. 



FEMININE FLASH-LIGHTS lOS 

It was a small group. 

One of the speakers of the evening said: "Per- 
haps you Americans do not realize that this ban- 
quet is an unusual occasion in Japan. I think that 
it is the first time that I have ever attended a 
banquet in all my life, when so many Japanese 
gentlemen had their own wives with them at 
that banquet. It is a very unusual thing to do, 
but I hope that, in time, it will become more com- 
mon in Japan, as it is in America." 

This speech was met with amused laughter on 
the part of the Japanese gentlemen present; but 
laughter that was kindly ; and it was met with ap- 
plause on the part of the Americans present. 

It was typical of the attitude of even the edu- 
cated Japanese man toward the matter of ap- 
pearing in public with his wife at his side. 

Up in Sapporo, on the island of Hokkaido, we 
were entertained by a beautiful Japanese woman. 
We had been away from America for several 
months and were tired of eating Japanese food, 
so when we were invited to this Japanese home 
for a dinner we groaned. 

But much to our delight., when we sat down we 
had as fine an American dinner as any of us had 
ever eaten. 

I turned to our hostess, a most beautiful Japa- 
nese woman; the wife of the Dean of the College 



104 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

at Sapporo; and said: ''Do you have servants who 
know how to cook American food?" 

''No, I cooked it all myself!" she said much 
to my surprise with a bow and a smile. 

And there she sat, cool and poised after having 
cooked food enough for fifteen people that morn- 
ing; and arranging for it to be served in the finest 
style; with place cards, salted almonds, Turkey, 
pudding, vegetables and everything that makes 
an American dinner good ; including a fine salad. 
There she sat; as cool, calm and collected as if 
servants had done all of the work that morning 
instead of she herself. 

And never in all of my life have I seen a more 
gracious hostess. She watched the wants of 
every guest. She noted which guests liked a 
special food, and saw to it that they had plenty 
of that particular food; and, in addition to this 
she kept a fascinating line of conversation going 
constantly during the meal. 

"Do you live in American fashion or Japanese 
fashion?" I asked her, knowing that she had 
been educated in America. 

"Both!" was her reply. "We have Japanese 
rooms for our Japanese guests and American 
rooms for our European and American guests." 

"But how do you live yourselves ; how are you 
training your children ?" I asked her. 

"We are training our daughters to live in 



FEMININE FLASH-LIGHTS 105 

American style; on a common ground with the 
men. That is the better way. That is the fairer 
way! That is the way out of our feminine dark- 
ness!" 

She said it quietly, with poise, and with a fine 
assurance which was thrilling. It sounded like a 
call to battle, like a trumpet note in the new free- 
dom for women. 

A missionary friend told me at the conclusion 
of that meal that this beautiful young Japanese 
hostess whispered to her Mother-in-law during 
the dinner a phrase that sounded strangely like 
American slang, when she noted that her mother- 
in-law was not carrying on much of a conversa- 
tion with the man beside her, "Start something! 
He can speak Japanese as well as English !'' 

At that, dear Mrs. Mother-in-law started an 
animated conversation in Japanese with her 
silent guest on her left. This was illustrative of 
the care with which our hostess was watching 
that we be kept happy at her table. It was a 
Feminine Flash-light that I do not care to for- 
get; an illustration of the possible efficiency, poise, 
grace, beauty and sweetness of the Japanese 
woman of the future when she shall have won 
her rights of freedom from the slavery of an 
inferior position to man^in the social scale. 

To an American, the position of woman in 
regard to prostitution in Japan is a terrible thing, 



106 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

but when we consider the light in which the 
Ethical thought of Japan sees it, we do not blame 
the women any more than Jesus blamed the 
woman taken in adultery in his day. 

The system of prostitution is run by the Gov- 
ernment and the largest income that the Govern- 
ment has, comes from the sale of Sake, the na- 
tional drink, and its houses of prostitution. 

A woman who becomes a Prostitute is looked 
upon as a heroine. This is for the simple reason 
that she is given a matter of several hundred yen, 
it depending upon her form, beauty and qualifica- 
tions for her position; and that money goes to 
her poor parents. When she leaves her little 
village to give a certain number of the years of 
her life to the Yoshiwara in order to free her par- 
ents from debt she is lauded and feted by the peo- 
ple of her village and sent off as one who goes 
on a crusade of service. 

Prostitution is so much a part of the acknowl- 
edged life of Japan that Temples for prostitutes 
exist where they may go and pray. In one 
Temple we saw large numbers of photographs 
put up by certain girls of the Yoshiwara to ad- 
vertise their wares. 

Consequently there is no fine tradition of 
ethical values established in Japan and the poor 
girl herself is not to blame. Nor is she blamed; 
for it is not at all an uncommon thing for a 



FEMININE FLASH-LIGHTS 107 

Japanese girl to marry out of a house of prostitu- 
tion into a fine family. 

One of the terrible Feminine Flash-lights that 
every careful traveler discovers in the Orient is 
the presence of Japanese girls in the segregated 
sections of Shanghai, Seoul, Peking, Nanking; 
and even so far away as Singapore. I under- 
stand however that a recent order from the Em- 
peror has called all these girls back to Japan, 
which is an upward step not only for Japan as a 
nation; but for the womankind of Japan. 

• • • • • • 

It was in a Japanese Hotel in northern China 
that Pat McConnell and I had our experience with 
the strange ways and customs of Japan. Pat was 
taking the pictures and I was writing the stories. 

We thought it would be an unusual experience 
to stay all night at a regular Japanese Inn. We 
stayed. 

That night, much to the amusement, of the 
missionaries who stayed with us,, three beautiful 
Japanese girls came gracefully into the cold room 
where we had started to take our clothes off. 

They bowed several times as they came with 
cups of hot tea. 

They seemed to pay particular attention to me. 

All three of them bowed to me first and then 
each proceeded to select an individual man to 
whom they served tea. 



108 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

I took it for granted that they had paid this 
particular attention to me because of some spe- 
cial characteristic of masculine beauty or intel- 
lectual appearance; or atmosphere of greatness 
that must have hovered about me in some un- 
known fashion. 

I made the mistake of swelling up with pride 
and bragging about this attention that I had re- 
ceived. 

"Ah, that's because of your bald head. They 
think that you are the old man of the party. 
They have great respect for old age!" the mis- 
sionary said with a roar of laughter. 

The truth of the matter was that I was the 
youngest of the party, but those girls had selected 
me as the venerable member of the group of 
Americans. 

But the climax came when these young ladies 
decided to stay with us "To the bitter end'' as 
Pat called it. 

After filling us with tea they still remained; 
bowing and smiling; even though they could not 
understand a word we were saying nor we a word 
that they were saying. 

"It's one o'clock now ! I'd like to get to bed," 
said Pat. 

"How long will they stay with us?" I asked. 

The missionaries only grinned in reply. 



FEMININE FLASH-LIGHTS 109 

"By George, I'm going to take my shirt off and 
see if they won't go!" said Pat. 

He took it off. The young girl who was serv- 
ing him took his shirt and after neatly folding it, 
laid it carefully away. 

^^So that's what they're waiting for ; to undress 
us?" queried Pat and the missionaries laughed 
again, waiting to see what would happen. 

"They can go as far as they like. If they can 
stand it,, I can!" said Pat. 

Then he took off his shoes. 

A young lady took the shoes, carefully brushed 
them off, and put them away. Then he took off 
socks, followed by his trousers. 

It looked as they would stay until Pat got into 
his Pajamas. He was in a corner. 

"It seems as if this young lady wants to put me 
to bed right !" said Pat, with a grin... 

"That's exactly what she is here for. It's a 
hotel custom in Japanese hotels and we get so that 
we don't think anything of it. They bathe in the 
same pool; men and women alike; and think 
nothing of it. After all, modesty is not entirely 
a matter of clothes, as the Japanese prove." 

"Anyhow, that's what I call service!" said 
Pat with a grin. 

It was a cold winter night in Seoul, Korea. I 
had been invited to dinner at a Korean home; 



110 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

the home of a former Governor under the Korean 
regime; and now, a respected official under the 
Japanese rule. 

I had looked forward to this dinner with un- 
usual interest. 

We took Rickshas to get there and nearly 
froze on the way. 

We took both our shoes and our coats off on 
the back porch and left them to the tender mercies 
of the zero weather which prevailed on that 
night. 

We were ushered into this beautiful home. 

A room was full of men; stately sons of the 
family; the gray-bearded,, dignified father; but 
no women, not a single woman. I wondered 
about this, for I knew that this household was 
noted for its beautiful daughters and a wonder- 
ful mother. The missionaries had told me that. 

I wondered why no women came to welcome 
me. 

Finally we sat down to one of those intermin- 
able Oriental dinners^ with thirty or forty 
courses; squatted on our haunches, on the cold 
floor; half-frozen, cramped and uncomfortable. 

Then in came a beautiful girl. She was beauti- 
ful in every sense of the word; physically and 
spiritually. There was a touch of refinement 
about her which made me know that she had re- 
ceived an English education. 



FEMININE FLASH-LIGHTS 111 

But she was not there for any part of the din- 
ner. Not at all. She was there merely to serve. 

I found that she could speak English and every 
time she came to serve me, I took the opportunity 
of talking with her ; taking a chance on whether 
it was diplomatic for me to do so or not. I was 
after information. 

"You speak good English?" I said. "Why do 
you not sit down and eat with us?" 

She laughed aloud. 

"My father would drop over dead if I did. It 
is not the custom in Korea for the women of the 
family to dine with the men on an occasion like 
this. We eat alone in the kitchen." 

"Have you a mother?" 

"Yes, but she is in the kitchen." 

"Will I not get to meet her before I go?" 

"Perhaps? Perhaps not. If you meet her at 
all it will be just at the close, of the evening, 
providing my father thinks to call her. It is not 
important; so our Korean men think." 

"But you; you know better? You have been 
in an American School?" I said, as she came in 
for the fifteenth course and paused a moment to 
talk with me. 

"Yes, I know better! I know the American 
way of treating women is the Christian way," she 
said sadly. 

"And what do you think of that way? Do 



112 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

you not like that way better than the Korean 
way?'' I asked. 

"The American way is much better/' Then 
she paused and much to my dehght used a typical 
American girl's phrase, with an appealing touch 
of pathos in her voice and a blush of crimson in 
her brown cheeks, "Why, I just love the Ameri- 
can way!" she said and then fled, blushing with 
shame, as if she had said something immodest. 

I did not see her again that evening. Nor did 
I see any of the other women of that household. 
Nor did I see the mother of the home at all. 
• ••••• 

It was in a Shanghai hospital. I was sitting 
beside an American newspaper friend who was 
at the head of the Chinese Information Bureau. 
He was a world-vagabond. Beside his bed sat a 
beautiful Chinese girl, who had been educated in 
England and whose mother was a Scotch woman. 
Her father was a full-blooded Chinese. 

"I love her but she won't marry me!" said 
my friend suddenly looking up toward the Chinese 
girl. 

She was a beautiful girl and could play a 
piano as few American women I have met. She 
would have graced any social room in America 
with her dark beauty, her brown eyes, and her 
Oriental fire. She was rich. Her father was 
worth several millions ; being one of many shrewd 






THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN^ PEKING. 

Long- before a single cathedral had been built in Europe 
this beautiful structure was erected. 




A BEAUTIFUL THIRTEEN STORY PAGODA NEAR PEKING. 




MILLIONS OF WAYSIDE TEMPLES AKD SHRINES ADORN THE 
FIELDS AND HIGHWAYS EVERYWHERE IN JAPAN^ KOREA^ AND 
CHINA. THIS IS ONE OP THEM. A SHRINE AND A TEMPLE. 




A SUNRISE SILHOUETTE PHOTOGRAPH OF SOME OF THE HUN- 
DREDS OF BELLS OF BUDDHA ON BOROBOEDOER, JAVA. 



FEMININE FLASH-LIGHTS US 

Chinese business men. She was dressed like a 
Parisian model, in the latest European styles. 
She was in China for the first time in her life. 
Her father had brought her back to marry a 
Chinese boy. She did not love him. She did 
love my American friend. 

"Why will you not marry James?" I asked 
her. 

"My father would kill me/' she said quietly. 

"Does he say so?" 

"He does. He went to America a week ago; 
and the last thing he said was, 'If you marry any- 
thing but a Chinese I will kill you !' " 

"Did he really mean it?" I asked her, aston- 
ished. 

"He meant it more than anything he ever 
meant in his life. It would be considered a dis- 
grace to my entire family if I married anybody 
but a Chinese boy." 

"Even though your father married a Scotch 
woman?" I said. 

"For that very reason it is imperative that I 
marry my own blood," she said. 

"That is terrible!" I replied catching my first 
glimpse of the strange and terrible social position 
in which a girl of mixed blood is placed in China. 

"You see,," she said in a quiet, refined voice, 
with a marked English accent, "I have an English 
education but I have Chinese blood. I can never 



114 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

be happy marrying a Chinese after I have been 
educated in England. I can never be happy with 
Chinese clothes, Chinese customs, and Chinese 
people. And yet if I marry the man I love, it will 
break my father's heart. He would kill me to 
be sure; for if he says he will, that means that 
he will keep his word. But that would not be the 
worst of it. To die would be easy." 

"What would be the worst of it?" I asked, my 
heart stirred with a strangely deep sympathy at 
this beautiful Chinese girl's dilemma. 

*'The worst thing would be that it would break 
my father's heart !" 

Then she wept. 

That was my first glimpse of the life of tragedy 
through which a half-breed woman of the Orient 
has to go. 

I met them in the Philippines, with Spanish 
and American blood running in their veins; I 
met Malay girls whose fathers had been German 
or English; I met Dyak girls whose fathers had 
been Dutch; and Javanese girls whose fathers 
had been either American, English or Dutch. 

I stayed with such a woman in a home in 
Borneo. She had been a Dyak girl. Yet she did 
not look it. She had a beautiful home with beau- 
tiful English speaking children. I met her in the 
interior of Borneo a hundred miles from a single 
white woman. And yet in this far interior ; liv- 



FEMININE FLASH-LIGHTS 115 

ing with her English husband who was the head 
of a mining project; she was keeping intact the 
EngHsh education of her children. There was a 
piano and the children played beautifully while 
the mother, in a rich contralto voice sang. 

She was graceful, accomplished, beautiful, 
poised and sweet. 

One night as we walked alone under the moon- 
light the Englishman opened his heart to me and 
said, "You are going to visit the Head-Hunting 
Dyaks to-morrow. You will see their abject 
squalor and filth. You will be surprised when I 
tell you that my wife was a Dyak girl and that 
I took her out of a Kampong fifteen years ago 
and took her to England.'' 

"That's a lie!" I exclaimed. 

"It is the truth!" he added. 

Somehow his statement angered me. I don't 
know why. Perhaps it was the unusual heat of 
the tropics. We were directly on the Equator. 
I would have fought him for that statement. 

But it was true. 

"And the hell of it was that when I took her to 
England she was not happy and my people would 
not receive her. So we have had to come back 
to Borneo and live our lives in this fashion, far 
from civilization." 

He was silent for a few minutes. 

"That is the fate of mixing bloods in these 



116 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

tropical lands/' he said with a shudder. "And the 
woman always suffers more than the man !" 

I met another Malay-English girl on the ship 
going from Singapore to Batavia, Java. 

She too was an educated, English-speaking girl 
of a strange beauty and fascination. She started 
to talk with me as I sat alone on the Dutch ship. 
We were the only English-speaking people on 
board and we felt a certain comradeship. We sat 
an entire evening talking about the problem of 
a girl of mixed blood in the Malay States. 

''White men always assume that we are bad 
girls. They come into the offices where we work 
as stenographers and insult us. It is that taint 
of mixed blood. We have the longings and the 
ideals of the best blood that is in our veins; but 
the skin and the color and the passions of the 
worst. We try to be good; some of us; but 
everything is against us. We can never marry 
white men; though we frequently fall in love 
with them for we work side by side with them in 
the offices. But when it comes to marrying us 
they fear the social ban. It is a terrible thing. 
There is no way out ! It is a thing that has been 
imposed upon us from the generations that have 
gone. We pay !'' 

I shall never forget her brown eyes, her brown 
skin, her heaving breast, as the great Dutch ship 



FEMININE FLASH-LIGHTS 117 

cut the waves of the South China Sea bound for 
Java. 

"Why are you leaving a good position and 
going to Java ?" I asked her. 

"They say things are better for us girls in 
Java; that the Dutch are not so particular. I 
shall no doubt be homesick for Singapore but I 
am going to try Java for a while. My sister 

is there!" 

• ••••• 

A Feminine-Flash Hght that has its humorous 
side was one that I experienced in Borneo. 

We had gone out to a Dyak village to take 
pictures. 

It was a miserably hot morning. That night I 
stayed in Pontianak which is bisected by the 
Equator. It was so cold in the middle of the 
night that I had to get up and put on a night 
shirt ! 

The next day we tramped ten miles through 
the Jungle to a Head-hunting Dyak village. 

I had been taking pictures for an hour in this 
Kampong when six of the most beautiful Dyak 
girls came in, with great Bamboo water tubes 
flung over their gracefully strong shoulders. 
Their skin looked like that of a red banana from 
toe to chin. They were stark naked save for a 
girdle about their loins. They had been five miles 
away for water. 



118 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

Their skin was flushed with exercise. There 
they stood, mystified at seeing white men in the 
village Kampong. 

In fact they were terrified. 

Their big brown eyes bulged out. 

Their breasts heaved with fear. 

I said to the missionary, "Dyak Madonnas! 
What a painting they would make ?" 

"Yes, there are no more beautiful women any- 
where. They look like bronze statues. A Rodin, 
or a St. Gaudens would go wild over their limbs 
and bodies." 

I asked the missionary to tell them that I 
wanted to take a picture of them just as they 
were, standing with their water vessels poised 
on their shoulders; in their naked splendor and 
beauty. 

He told them. 

They squealed for all the world like American 
girls and ran for dear life, disappearing in the 
flash of an eye. 

He tried to coax them to come out to get a pic- 
ture taken. The Missionary could speak their 
language but they would only peek through the 
doors with grinning faces. 

Finally they agreed that we could take their 
pictures if I would let them put dresses on. 

I didn't want to do this ; for I wanted them just 



FEMININE FLASH-LIGHTS 119 

as they were ; but saw that they were adamant in 
their souls even if their brown bodies did look 
as soft as ripening mangos; and as beautiful and 
brown. 

I pictured all sorts of ugly dresses; discarded 
by the white folks and given to them. But much 
to my surprise, when they appeared all dressed 
up for the picture, every last one of them had 
on a white woman's discarded night gown. 

I wanted to laugh. It destroyed their pictur- 
esqueness but those gowns could not destroy their 
symmetrical beauty of limb and body. 

'That's a quick way to dress up !" I said to my 
missionary friend. 

We smiled but I got the picture. 

And back of these Flash-lights Feminine ; is the 
black page of the history of womankind in all the 
Far East; with footbinding still rampant over 
nine-tenths of China; baby-killing, baby-selling, 
and baby-slavery which I saw with my own eyes 
time and time again; with slavery of womankind, 
from Japan down to Ceylon the regular thing. 
But there is still hope in the woman-heart of the 
Far East; and the hope is the American woman 
and her religion. That and that alone will break 
down prejudices, break off shackles, and tear to 
bits the traditions of the past. 



120 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

"The women suffer! Yes, the women always 
suffer !" said a big fellow to me up in the northern 
part of Luzon in the Philippines one evening-. 

"What do you mean?'^ I asked him, scenting a 
story. 

Then the man told me of a cholera epidemic 
that he had passed through; of how he had tried 
to care for the sick, even though he was not a 
physician; told me of their poor superstitious 
methods of driving away the "evil spirits." 

He told of how he had gone into homes where 
he found seven inmates dead and four dying; of 
how he tried to care for them with nothing 
medicinal at hand. 

Then he told me of how the poor people went 
down to a dirty inland river and had killed a hog, 
taken its heart; killed a dog, taken its heart; and 
then after putting them on a little raft, floated 
them off down the river to drive the cholera away. 
Then he told me of how the natives had, in their 
desperation, tied tight bands about their ankles 
to keep the evil spirits from coming up out of 
the earth into their bodies. 

"But what do you yourself do about a doctor. 
You say that you are 400 miles from a doctor, 
even here. What about your children, when they 
take sick?" I asked him, and then was sorry that 
I had asked the question because of a terribly hurt 
and unutterably sorrowful look in his eyes. 



FEMININE FLASH-LIGHTS 121 

"Mother and I don't like to talk about that or 
to think about it!'' he said simply, and I knew 
that I had torn open an old wound which was 
just over his heart. 

His voice broke as he spoke, and he looked 
at the woman who was his brave helpmate and 
said again: ''Mother and I don't like to think 
about that !" The tears ran down over his cheeks 
and "Mother's" too, and mine also. 

"I am sorry! I am sorry if I have opened an 
old wound!" I said, quite helpless to remedy the 
damage I had done. I felt as one who had un- 
wittingly trodden on a flower bed and crushed 
some violets. They bleed, even though you see 
no blood. I saw that their hearts were bleeding. 
But he spoke. 

"We were 400 miles from a doctor. Baby took 
sick. If we could have had a doctor she would 
have been saved." 

"Now Daddy, we do not know for certain about 
that," said the ever-conservative woman in her. 

''There was not a Filipino doctor. She died in 
mother's arms !" 

It was oppressively silent in that far-off mis- 
sion home for a few minutes. I thought some 
one would sob aloud. It might have been any one 
of us, the way we all felt. I took hold of my cane 
chair with a grip that numbed my hands for a 
half hour afterwards. 



CHAPTER VII 

FLASH-LIGHTS OF FUN 

ALL the 'Teck's Bad Boys" of the world are 
not confined to American soil. 

I found them all over the Far East; especially 
in China. 

I was annexed by one of them who became a 
sort of a guide de luxe when we were going 
through the ruined Palaces of the romantic 
regions of Peking. 

He annexed himself to us in somewhat the 
same fashion as a thistle or a burr annexes itself 
to you as you walk through the field where thistles 
are thick. 

He was an acquired asset of questionable value. 
With him were a lot of followers but it was 
plain to be seen that he was the leader of the 
gang; which was, for all the world, like a typical 
street gang in an American city. 

Who could pass up that group of a dozen little 

rascals who followed us through the ruins of the 

old Summer Palace? Who could resist their 

imitations of everything one did? I sneezed 

and the little rascals sneezed also. I counted one, 

123 



IM FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

two, three,, four, as I adjusted my Graflex for a 
picture and I heard a chorus of laughing ''One, 
two, three, fours." I yelled ahead to an American 
member of the party and said ''Wait!'* and a 
dozen boys yelled "Wait !" 

We fell in love with the dirty-faced rascals. 
They looked to be a nuisance when we started 
and I wanted them driven back, but before we 
were through they had become the most interest- 
ing part of the whole trip. Sure enough we 
emptied our purses of pennies and some white 
money. The little fellow who was in his bare 
feet and who said, with a real touch of seven 
year old Chinese humor, "These are leather shoes 
that I have on and they will last all my life," won 
our hearts. That was humor with a vengeance. 

This lad was happy. No wonder then that 
when one of the party passed him an extra penny 
early in the morning he winked knowingly as one 
who had been taken into the inner councils of af- 
fection. 

And no wonder that he followed the man who 
gave him that penny to the end of the morning, 
and no wonder when we told him through the 
interpreter that we liked the boys because they 
were good boys; he said in return, "Some boys 
would have followed you around, pulling your 
coats and being rude and yelling at you." 

The nonchalant way in which they admitted 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FUN 1^5 

that they were good boys won our hearts and we 
came back penniless. 

Then who can forget the little rascals who 
smiled and winked back in the midst of the digni- 
fied Lama ceremonies over at the Lama Temple, 
proving that they were, after all, real human 
boys with a laugh and the spirit of fun in their 
little souls in spite of their having to take part 
in this dignified chanting service. 

It was fun when the service was over to see 
them tumble out of the Temple so fast that one 
boy fell and about six fell on top of him just as 
American boys do pouring out of school. I even 
saw one lad whack another one on the back of his 
little bald head and a scufile ensued. They 
laughed, fought, tumbled pell-mell, got up again 
grinning, winked and laughed back at the good 
natured Americans for all the world like Ameri- 
can boys. 

The Chinese have a distinct sense of humor 
and it is very much like that which is found in 
our own America. Indeed the Chinese are like us 
in many respects. 

The Filipino enjoys a good joke but his humor 
is more cruel than is American humor. 

The Dyak of Borneo has a sense of play and 
fun that would not exactly appeal to an American 
mind; although there are those who claim that 
American football is a near kin to the delightful 



126 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

game of Head-hunting indulged in by the Dyaks 
of Borneo. 

The Dyaks have for centuries been known as 
the head-hunters of the Far East. They, in 
common with the Igorotes of the PhiHppines,, 
have had the playful custom of going out when 
the mood took them and bringing in a few heads 
just as our Indians used to gtt scalps. When a 
Dyak youth wanted to marry a nice young Dyak 
girl to whom he had taken a fancy (and I can as- 
sure the reader that some of them are as beauti- 
ful as Rodin's bronze statues), he didn't even 
dare mention his desire for that young bronze 
beauty until he had brought in five or six heads. 
After that he had some standing in the lady's 
sight. Without the heads he had no more chance 
of winning either the girl herself or her pa or ma 
or any of the Dyak family than the proverbial 
snowball has of getting through Borneo without 
melting. It just simply couldn't be done accord- 
ing to Dyak etiquette. 

Head-hunting was a game between tribes also. 
When two tribes of Dyaks felt a playful mood 
coming on, they would challenge each other to a 
head-hunting game. The game would last for a 
week or so and the tribe that took the most heads 
won. It was nothing like ''Tag you're it." If so, 
some of the skulls .that I have seen at Dyak Com- 
pounds would not be grinning so hideously these 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FUN 1^7 

days as they ornament the poles of certain vain 
and proud Dyak hunters. 

The Battaks of Sumatra also have a playful 
custom of getting rid of their old men. When 
a man gets so old that they think it is about time 
for him to tell his last tale, they put him up a 
Cocoanut tree. Then all of the young bucks of 
the village get together and try to shake him 
down. If he is too feeble to hold on, and comes 
down, that is a sign of heaven that his days are 
through and they cook him and eat him. 

• ..••• 

The Japanese claim to have a great sense of 
humor. Japanese students speaking in America, 
insist that this is true. But travelers in Japan do 
not find it so. Indeed if Japan had a sense of 
humor, it would keep her out of many an inter- 
national tangle. She does not know how to laugh. 
Her sense of dignity is so exaggerated that she 
does not know the fine art of smiling and laugh- 
ing at herself. 

''What does Japan most need to learn?" a stu- 
dent asked me. 

'To laugh," I replied. 

/T think that you are right! Your Lincoln 
knew how to laugh !" was his response as he went 
off thoughtfully. 

I was advertised to speak in a northern college 
in Japan. The Dean of the school wanted to ad- 



128 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

vertise me so that the students would all come out 
to hear me. This is the way he did it : 

"Dr. Stidger is a college student who played with the 
foot ball in America. He is a man with the bigness of 
the head ! He reaches the six feet tall ; the four feet 
around ; has an arm like an ox and a head like a board !" 

I was not certain as to just what he meant by- 
many of those references, but I was assured that 
they were intended to be highly complimentary 
to me. I am not yet sure of that but I had a 
good laugh just the same. 

The story is told of a ruthless American humor- 
ist Hotel-keeper in Singapore who was entertain- 
ing a group of Japanese Officers from the Japa- 
nese Navy. This American had no love for 
Japan. He also knew of their lack of humor; so 
when the Japanese Captain arrived at the hotel 
the American Manager made quite an extended 
speech of welcome, as his American friends list- 
ened, greatly amused. 

He said in part: 'The hotel is yours! During 
your stay the entire force of servants is at your 
disposal. If there is anything that you want that 
you do not see, please ask for it." 

The Japanese Captain bowed continuously and 
smiled; sucking in his breath with a character- 
istic national custom; the same sound they made 
as they eat fried eggs in a Japanese dining car; 
a sound similar to the old-fashioned but now 



4 ^%s 




OLD BROMO VOLCANO^ JAVA. 

"The way it effervesces Bromo is a fitting name," said 
the author w^hen he saw it in action. 




A SIDE VIEW OF BEAUTIFUL BOROBOEDOER IX JAVA. 

Said by travelers to make the Pyramids look like child's 
play as a tremendous piece of construction; and as a work 
of art to have no rival in the whole world. 




NAKED AND OTHERWISE. 

This curious conglomoration of Mongrel children watch- 
ing- the photographer in Borneo where Dyaks, Chinese, 
Malay and others mix indiscriminately. 




A DOG MARKET AMONG THE IGGOROTEES OF THE PHILIPPINES. 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FUN 129 

obsolete method of drinking coffee from a saucer. 
"There is just one request however that we will 
have to make of you, while you are here with us 
in the hotel," continued the American hotel man- 
ager. 

"And what is that may I ask?'' inquired the 
Japanese Captain, still bowing and sucking in air 
through his teeth. 

"That you do not climb around in the trees !" 

The Japanese officers did not see the joke and 
did not even smile but the Americans in the Far 
East have laughed over it for years. 

Which reminds one of the night on the Sambas 
River when a hundred little monkeys were silhou- 
etted against a crimson sunset. 

Red, brown, yellow, golden, blue orchids 
flashed in the sunlight; and flowers of every hue 
under God's blue skies made brilliant the river 
banks. At times the ship went so close that I 
could reach out and grab a limb of a tree, much 
to the indignation of the monkeys who chattered 
at me as if I had stolen something. Now and 
then a big lazy alligator slid into the water from 
the muddy banks as the wave-wash from our 
propellor frightened him. 

Coming back down the Sambas River, along its 
winding, beautiful way we sat one evening and 
watched a crimson sunset from the deck of the 



130 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

ship. At one point in the river there was a row 
of dead, bare trees. There were no leaves on 
the branches — only monkeys: big red monkeys, 
which they call ''Beroks,'' and little gray fellows, 
which they call "Wahwahs." These monkeys 
were strikingly silhouetted against the crimson 
sunset in strange tropical fashion. From the tips 
of those dead trees down to the lowest branches 
dozens of monkeys stood like sentinels, or romped 
like children, or chattered like magpies. Their 
long curling tails silhouetted below the branches 
against the light of evening. 

Most Americans who go in and out of Japan 
get disgusted with the regulations that policemen 
impose upon them. 

This is especially true of those Americans liv- 
ing in China who are compelled, for business 
reasons, to go in and out of Japan, for at every 
trip they are required to answer the same list 
of questions. I traveled from Korea into Japan 
with the Military Attache of the Spanish Lega- 
tion. When we landed a Japanese officer who had 
known hipi for many years insisted upon his 
answering the usual questions. 

"I've been in this country for ten years and 
yet I never go out or in that they do not compel 
me to go through the same foolish police regula- 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FUN 181 

tions which they have copied from Germany and 
haven't sense enough to give up!'' he said indig- 
nantly. 

I also traveled with a party in which there was 
a Methodist Bishop's wife. This Bishop's wife 
absolutely refused to give the Japanese police- 
man her age. Not that she had any reason to 
be ashamed of her age. In fact she could easily 
have passed for twenty years younger than she 
probably was, but she just had the average Amer- 
ican woman's spunk and refused to give it. 

For a few minutes it looked as if diplomatic 
relations between Japan and America might be 
seriously cracked, if not broken; for the Japanese 
officer had no sense of humor. That is one of the 
chief defects of the Japanese police and military 
system. It has no sense of humor. It takes it- 
self too seriously. It does not know how to laugh. 

To the eight or ten Americans in the party 
the whole matter was a huge joke and we ad- 
mired the spunk of the Bishop's wife, but the poor 
Japanese police officer was facing what he 
thought was an international problem. 

Need it be said that the whole matter was 
finally settled to the entire satisfaction; not of the 
Japanese officer, but to the entire satisfaction of 
the Bishop's wife. 



132 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

A friend of mine who happens to be in busi- 
ness in the Orient got so tried of being inter- 
viewed, trailed, and made to answer innumerable 
questions about his mother, grandmother, etc., 
that one day on landing in Yokohama, in a spirit 
of fun, he answered the officer's questions in this 
manner: 

"How old are you?" 

"Thirty-six/^ 

"Have you a family ?'' 

"Yes." 

"How many children?" 

"Three." 

"How old are they?" 

"One is thirty-eight, one forty, and one forty- 
five." 

"What is your occupation?" 

"Commander-in-Chief of the Greenland Navy." 

"What are you doing in Japan?" 

"Getting a cargo of ice to take back to Green- 
land." 

After satisfying his appetite for information, 
the Japanese police officer departed to make his 
reports, while the young American went to his 
hotel with a grin all over his face. 

While he was eating his dinner that evening 
suddenly the Japanese officer appeared in the din- 
ing room with a big smile on his face and walked 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FUN 133 

over to where the American sat with a group of 

friends. 

As he approached the American's table he said 

with a grin, ''You American! I know! You 

American !'' 

"How did you guess it, my friend?" 

"You make me one tam fool !" he said holding 

out the report. 

• • • • • • 

Some of the most laughable things that one 
sees in the Orient are the Japanese signs trans- 
lated into English by some Japanese merchant 
who has picked up a dash of English here and 

there. 

One such sign which caused a lot of amusement 
was that of a tailor who was trying to cater to 
American Tourist trade. He had, evidently, also 
had some contact with the spiritual phraseolog}^ 
of the missionaries. He had painted on a big 

sign : 

''BUY OUR PANCE! 

THEY FIT YOU BETTER AND 

THEY WARM YOUR LEGS LIKE THE 

LOVE OF GOD!" 

Perhaps the most exhilaratingly humorous 
thing that the Japanese have perpetrated on the 
Koreans was a list of advices printed and posted 
all over Korea by the Police Department as to 
the regulation of Fords: 



134. FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

RULES! 

1. At the rise of hand of policeman, stop rapidly. Do 
not pass him by or otherwise disrespect him. 

2. When a passenger of the foot hove in sight, tootle 
the horn trumpet to him melodiously at first. If he 
still obstacles your passage, tootle him with vigor and 
express by word of the mouth the warning, *'hi, hi." 

3. Beware of the wandering horse that he shall not take 
fright as you pass him. Do not explode the exhaust 
box at him. Go soothingly by, or stop by the road- 
side till he gently pass away. 

4. Give big space to the festive dog that make sport in 
the roadway. Avoid entanglement of dog with your 
wheel spokes. 

5. Go soothingly on the grease-mud, as there lurk 
the skid-demon. Press the brake of the foot as you 
roll around the corners to save the collapse and tie- 
up. 

6. Number of people you put in the Ford: You put 
two in the front house and three in the back house. 

There were other rules but this list will be 
sufficient as a Flash-light of Fun to give some 
idea of the ridiculous way in which the average 
Japanese twists the ideas and phraseology of 
English in the translations. 

I saw one great sign which brought a smile. It 
was up on the island of Hokkaido. It had printed 
in large English letters: 

"GET YOUR MOTHER'S MILK HERE!" 

Below that sentence there was a picture of a 
cow which looked as much like a combination of 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FUN 135 

an Elephant and a Camel as anything I know. 
The artist must have been a wonder. Attached 
to each of the cow's udders were long lines of 
hose that ran for about ten feet across a big bill- 
board. At the end of each line of hose was a 
nipple, like our American baby-nipples. At the 
end of each nipple there was a man-sized baby 
pulling away at the nipple. It was one of the 
funniest advertising signs I ever saw. I watched 
several Americans look up at it and every one of 
them laughed aloud. And the funny thing about 
it was that it was intended to be a serious adver- 
tising sign. 

• ••••• 

At a banquet given in the Imperial Hotel in 
Tokyo one of the most side-splitting incidents 
happened unintentionally that ever happened at 
any banquet anywhere. 

One of the sons of a great Japanese business 
man was speaking. The banquet was in honor of 
a well-known College President from America 
who had come to take up work in the Orient. 
This banquet was to welcome him officially to 
Japan. 

. One of the speakers, sitting beside Mr. Uchida, 
the Foreign Minister, had been a student in Amer- 
ica where this man was formerly the college 
president and he was trying to make the crowd 
see how happy he was to welcome the president 



1S6 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

to Japan. He did it in the following language as 
nearly as I can remember it : 

"I feel like a cartoon I see in your peculiar 
paper — what you call him — Puck? Judge? No 
— ^he bin in that peculiar paper, Life? That was 
he. 

"This picture; he shows two dogs talking to 
each other. 

"One dog — he a great, what you call him — 
Coolie? Pug? Yes, he was a Scottish Coolie. 
The other was a little wee dog; a Pugnacious 
Dog, I think you call him. 

"The little dog he have his tail all done up in 
the bandages. 

"The big dog say, 'Little dog, for why you have 
your tail all bandaged up like that ? You have an 
accident ?' 

" 'No,' say the little dog, 'but my master, he 
just come home from France, and I am so glad 
to see him I bin wagging my tail all day long 
until it get broke and I have to have him wrapped 
up like this.' " 

Then the speaker turned dramatically — ^with 
the deepest sense of seriousness; without a trace 
of a smile on his face, without a glimmer of con- 
sciousness of the fact that the Americans at that 
banquet were biting their teeth to keep from 
bursting into laughter ; and with a grand flourish, 
pointed to the American dignitary and said, "I 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FUN 137 

feel just like that little dog. I so glad to see 
Dr. come to Japan that I have been wag- 
ging my tail all day long." 

But he got no further. The American crowd ; 
full-dressed, and full of dignity as it was; ex- 
ploded. That speech was too much, even for the 
sake of international courtesy, to expect such a 
crowd to hold in. Fortunately most of the edu- 
cated Japanese there saw the joke and joined in 
the laugh. 

• • • • • • 

We had a funny experience in a dining car on 
a Japanese train coming from northern Japan 
down to Tokyo one evening. 

A well-dressed Japanese in a rich Kimono sat 
drinking heavily at a table a few feet from us. 

Suddenly he looked up and yelled ''Silence!" 
looking directly at us. 

It was so sudden and so funny that I laughed. 
This made the Japanese gentleman angry. 

Then he let forth a more extended English 
sentence. Later we figured that it was the only 
sentence in English that he knew, and that he 
had learned that sentence by sitting at the feet 
of some stern, English teacher who had occasion 
to reiterate that sentence frequently. 

This drunken Japanese looked at me sternly 
for laughing and said, "Silence! All gentlemen 
must be silent!^' 



138 IFLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

This was too much for my sense of humor and 
I laughed again. 

''Silence! All gentlemen must be silent!" he 
yelled a third time. 

''We must get away from him ; or we'll get into 
trouble. I can't keep from laughing when he 
repeats that," I said to Dr. Goucher. 

We all moved back to another table, but Dr. 
Goucher sat by himself at a little table. This 
moving, insulted the drunken Japanese and he 
came back to where Dr. Goucher sat and leered 
into his face yelling once again, "All gentlemen 
must be silent !" 

At this one of the party jumped to the side of 
Dr. Goucher and took the Japanese by the 
shoulder and turned him around and said, "Go! 
Sit down, fool !" 

The train was whirling through the night. 
There were mutterings and imprecations among 
the Japanese and we thought that they were di- 
rected toward us ; but a missionary who could un- 
derstand the language,, said that the whole crowd 
of Japanese was severely reprimanding the 
drunken Japanese for insulting foreigners. They 
told him in Japanese phrases that he ought to be 
ashamed of insulting foreigners in his own 
country. 

About five minutes after this he suddenly 
left his seat, came staggering down the aisle of 



FLASH-LIGHTS 'OF FUN 139 

the car with a plate full of big red apples and 
offered an apple to each one of us as a peace 
offering. 

We got to calling him, in our party *'01d Mr. 
^All gentlemen must be silent!"' and he 'came to 
be a real character in our fun. 

But one morning a month later as we were all 
boarding a train in Fusan, Korea, bound for 
Seoul, who should be sitting in the car but "Old 
Mr. ^All gentlemen must be silent.' " 

This time he was in American clothes. We had 
a Japanese friend with us. We told this friend 
about the incident on the train in northern Japan 
and asked him who the man was. 

"Why that is a member of the House of Lords 
and he is going up to Korea representing the Diet 
to make a report on the Korean outrages.," we 
were told. 

Another month passed and I was coming back 
from Seoul, Korea, to Tokio, Japan, when I 
suddenly. ran into our old friend "All gentlemen 
must be silent !" This time he was drunk again, 
and sitting in a Japanese dining car with the same 
Kimono on that he had worn the first time we 
saw him. He saw me enter the car. 

I tried to avoid him,, but he was not to let this 
opportunity for international courtesy go by un- 
noticed and unimproved. So, much to my de- 
light and surprise, he arose, and made a low bow. 



140 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

I bowed back. He made another bow until his 
nose almost touched the car. I made a return 
bow. He made a third one. I followed suit. 
He made a fourth. I made a fourth, although I 
was beginning to feel dizzy and my insides were 
beginning to complain. 

I wondered when the thing would stop. I 
thought of a hundred fat men I had seen on a 
Gymnasium floor trying to do the same thing 
and touch the floor with their hands. I knew 
that there was a limit to my endurance in a test 
of this kind. He bowed ^vt, six, seven, eight, 
nine, ten times, and I bowed back. I could see 
things whirling around me. 

"Blame it, why doesn't he stop some time!" I 
said to myself. 

I was desperate. Then suddenly I looked at 
him and he looked at me and he said, with great 
dignity, "All gentlemen must be silent!'' and sat 
down, with his friends and his wines. 

I don't know whether he realized how funny it 
was or not. I don't know whether he even knew 
what he was saying in his drunken condition, but 
I do know that when I got out of that car into the 
vestibule I had the laugh of my life. A Japanese 
woman came by, smiled at me and I am sure said 
to herself: 

"Ah, these Americans they are all crazy!" 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FUN 14*1 

The last Flash-light of Fun is a picture from 
the Philippines. 

I have spoken in the chapter on "Flash-lights 
of Faith'' of the trip to the Negrito tribe, but in 
that chapter I did not speak of the desperate ad- 
venture of the trip back down the jungle trail to 
civilization after the experience with the old man. 

For the second time on that memorable day I 
dropped in my tracks with a sunstroke. My legs 
refused to move. My muscles were congested 
with waste matter and evidently my brain was 
also. When I returned to consciousness I saw 
lying beside me Mr. Huddleston, an old mission- 
ary who had been in the Philippines for many 
years. Across from, him was a naked Negrito 
who was acting as our guide. 

I looked up in a tree above us and saw what I 
thought was a group of monkeys. 

'Took at the monkeys V I said to the mission- 
ary. 

"There are no monkeys in that tree!" he said. 

That made me angry. My mind was affected 
by the sun to such an extent that I had an insane 
desire to grab the Bolo of the Negrito guide out 
of his belt and run it through the missionary. I 
made a determined mental effort to do so,, but 
my arm would not work. I strove as one strives 
in a dream when he is trying to run away from 
some imagined danger and his feet are tied down. 



142 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

If I could have gotten my hands on that bolo I 
would have run it through the missionary without 
a minute's hesitation. 

But my mind was detracted from this thought 
by two large elephants which I suddenly saw run- 
ning down the path on which we were lying. I 
yelled aloud! 

''The elephants! They will trample us man! 
Look ! There they come !'' I cried pointing up the 
trail on which we were lying. 

''Why you're plumb crazy man! You've 
missed too many boats! That sun's got you! 
There are no elephants on this trail !" 

"But I know elephants when I see them!" I 
cried and tried to roll out of the trail but again 
found it impossible to make my brain and my 
muscles coordinate. It was a terrible moment 
to me. 

"My God man! Are you crazy! I know ele- 
phants when I see them. They're right on us 
now! Help me out of here! I can't move!" 

"I tell you there are no elephants and there are 
no monkeys in these islands. I've been here twen- 
ty years or more !" 

"But I know elephants when I see them!" 

But just at that moment a much greater dan- 
ger confronted us, for I saw three tigers leap 
out of the jungle and start after the two ele- 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FUN 143 ] 

phants ; right down the trail toward us. Then I i 

knew that we were as good as dead. ] 

I yelled: ''Tigers! Tigers! They are running i 

after the elephants I They are on top of us 1" ! 

The fool of a missionary laughed aloud, as he ! 
lay on the trail and said, "Plumb crazy ! Plumb 

crazy! Sun's got him! Sun's got him!" | 

"Sun's got who, fool? The elephants and ! 

tigers will kill us in about a minute!" j 

But just then something happened which upset 

my calculations and made me have a feeling that \ 
— after all — perhaps the old missionary was right 

— for suddenly those two elephants; being too i 

closely pursued by the tigers; nonchalantly flew ] 
into the air like two great birds, and lighted in 
the tree over our heads where I thought the 
monkeys were. If those elephants hadn't started 

to fly ; I should still be arguing with the mission- \ 

ary; but as it turned out; I shut my fool mouth i 

and decided that the missionary was right and j 

that I had "Missed too many boats." ] 



CHAPTER VIII 

FLASH-LIGHTS OF FREEDOM 

SELF-DETERMINATION!^' That phrase 
has set the whole world on fire ! 

"Independence !'' That word somehow has 
awakened the Oriental world; awakened that 
mass of humanity as it has never been awakened 
before. 

Korea perhaps has thrilled to this awakening 
as no other section of the Orient or the Near and 
Far East. India's millions are restless; the Fili- 
pino is hungry for Independence although he is 
loyal to the United States; but Korea has the 
matter set in its heart like adamant. This deter- 
mination will never be broken; Korea will never 
be conquered by Japan ! 

This dream of complete and full independence 
is buried in the souls of the children, as well as in 
the souls of the brave women, and of the old men 
of Korea. 

'Tt is one of the most thrilling things I have 
ever seen in the Orient !" said a man on the Edi- 
torial staff of Millard's Weekly. "It is the most 
significant outcome of the war; Korea's passion 

145 



146 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

for independence, and the Student Movement in 
China!" 

I said to a business man of Cahfornia who had 
traveled all over the Orient and who had been 
sent as part of the Commission that prepared the 
way for the abandonment of the Picture Bride 
custom, "What is the most significant thing you 
have seen in the Orient?" 

"The determination of the Koreans for Self- 
determination !" was his quick reply. 

"Will they get it?" 

"It is inevitable in time!" he responded, and 
then he added : "Why the little rascals ; the chil- 
dren, I mean; paint the Korean flags on their 
brown bellies, because the Japanese gendarmes 
will not allow them to display the Korean flag in 
public !" and he laughed aloud at the memory. 

"Have you seen Korean kiddieS; with flags 
painted on their stomachs ?" 

"Dozens of them. They like to show them to 
Americans," he said. 

A week later I was walking with a Korean 
missionary and asked him if what the business 
man from California had told me about the chil- 
dren was true and he said, "Wait until we find a 
group of them." 

We waited for only a few minutes when we 
ran into a crowd coming home from school. A 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FREEDOM 14T 

friendly smile and a low-voiced '^Mansei" got at- 
tention. 

Then we pointed to our own stomachs. 

In a flash they caught on to what we wanted 
and, looking around cautiously, each little rascal 
untied his robe and there, sure enough was the 
flag of his country painted on his stomach. 

"That is one of the most thrilling sights I have 
seen in the Orient \" I said with tears in my eyes. 
"U the children of the land feel that way, Korea 
will never be conquered !" 

"The American understands! The American 
understands!" one of the little bright-eyed boys 
said to the missionary in Korean. 

• ••*•• 

A missionary was teaching a class of Koreans 
about Heaven. 

A little hand shot up. 

The missionary nodded that the child could 
speak. 

"Will there be any Japs in Heaven?" 

This was a baffling question; for diplomatic 
destinies were at stake. But missionaries are 
usually honest, so she said, "Yes, if they are good 
Japs !" 

"Then I don't want to go !" said the little eight- 
year-old Korean v/ith emphasis. 

Another teacher was telling a class in Geogra- 
phy to draw a map of the Orient. 



148 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

One Korean child said, "Do we have to put in 
that little group of islands east of the coast of 
China?'* 

I met one Korean whom I had known in 
America. He was educated in the American uni- 
versities. He was in every sense of the word a 
gentleman and an intellectual. 

He told me that the older children of his family 
had taught the nine-months-old baby to raise its 
hands in the air above its head whenever the 
word "Mansei" was spoken. 

I got an electrical shock of patriotism the day 
I saw that tiny child lift its little arms above its 
head when that sacred word was spoken. It was 
like a benediction of freedom ! 

"This posture of the child is more significant," 

said Mr. , "when you know that the most 

cruel method of torture that the Japanese use is 
that of stretching a man, woman or child up by 
the thumbs to the ceiling with his toes just touch- 
ing the floor." 

In that same posture of torture Koreans rise 
to their toes when they give their national cry 
of "Mansei" for all the world like an American 
student giving his college yell. 

"It means life and death to give that cry as 
you know," said this intelligent Korean. 

"Then what will your children do when they 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FREEDOM 149 

grow a bit older and go out on the streets and 
yell this cry?" I asked this intelligent father. 

"Be killed, no doubt, by some ignorant, ruth- 
less Japanese gendarme!'' he said with finality. 

"Then you should not allow them to teach its 
tiny lips that word !" I said. 

"I would rather my child were dead than to 
have it forget that cry V 

In this same family one Sunday afternoon a 
two-year-old child was sleeping on a mat. The 
father and mother were reading some American 
papers sent them by their old college friends in 
the United States. 

Suddenly that little two-year-old sat straight 
up in its mat bed, lifted its arms in the air and 
shouted "Mansei! Mansei! Mansei!" three 
times and then dropped back to sleep as if nothing 
had happened. 

"How did you feel?'' I asked my Korean 
friend. 

"It made me cry. I said to my wife 'As long 
as Korea has babies with that in their little souls 
before they are two years of age, Korea will 
never be assimilated by Japan !' " 

The children of Korea look up at the ceiling 
when a Japanese teacher enters a room. They 
are compelled to have Japanese teachers ; even in 
the mission schools. The children refuse to do 
anything for a Japanese teacher. 



150 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

One day a Japanese teacher thought that he 
would break that mood by telling a funny story. 
He told it with skill. 

But not a child laughed, although one of them 
said to her father that night, "It was hard not 
to laugh for it was a very funny story!'' 

"Who tells you to do these things; you stu- 
dents ? Who teaches you to treat your Japanese 
teachers in that manner?" my Korean friend 
asked his six-year-old child. 

"Nobody tells us ; we just do it ourselves ! All 
the children hate the Japanese!'' he replied with 
the wisdom of a grown man. 

All over Korea we saw Korean flags cut in 
walls, carved on stones, and against excavations 
where the sand was impressionable to little fingers 
and sticks. I took many photographs of these un- 
conventional flags. 

There is one instance where Korean children 
went on a strike just at Commencement time. It 
meant that they would not get their diplomas but 
that was just the reason they did it : to show their 
contempt for Japanese diplomas. 

Japanese authorities begged them to return to 
school. 

Finally on Commencement Day they decided to 
return. 

Something had happened. 

It was a day of rejoicing among the Japanese 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FREEDOM 151 

SO they invited a lot of Japanese officers to the 
Commencement exercises. 

The diplomas were given, to each boy; the 
Japanese teachers bowing, and smiling in their 
peculiar way. 

Then a thirteen-year-old Korean boy stepped 
to the front to make the address of thanks. He 
made a beautiful speech of thanks. The Japanese 
teachers were bowing with delight. 

But the boy's speech was not finished. He 
paused toward the end, threw back his blouse, 
lifted his proud head and said, *'I have only this 
one thing further to add." 

He knew the seriousness of what he was about 
to do. He knew that it would possibly mean 
death to him and his relatives. 

''We want but one thing of you Japanese. 
You have given us education, and you have given 
us these diplomas. The teachers have been good 
to us." 

Then he reached in his blouse and pulled out a 
Korean flag. To have one in one's possession is 
a crime in Korea in the judgment of the Japanese. 

Waving it above his little head he cried, ''Give 
us back our country ! May Korea live a thousand 
years! Mansei! Mansei! Mansei!" 

At that signal every boy in that school jumped 
to his feet, whipped out a Korean flag and fran- 
tically waved it in the air, weeping and yelling in 



152 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

wild abandonment to the faith and courage of 
freedom in their hearts! 

Then they tore their diplomas up before the 
horrified and angered Japanese teachers. 

The result was a great student demonstration 
for freedom ; which was broken up by a force of 
Japanese gendarmes with drawn swords ; but not 
before the shooting of many boys and girls; and 
not before over four hundred girls and boys were 
thrown into prison; some of them never to 
emerge. 

In the chapter on ''Flash-lights of Faith" I 
told the story of the seventy-five-year-old Korean 
who unflinchingly faced the Japanese gendarmes 
and admitted that he knew the source from which 
the Independence Movement had come ; and knew 
the signers of the Declaration personally; every 
one of them. This spirit burns in the heart of, 
not only the babies of Korea but also in the souls 
of the white haired stately patriarchs. 

One old man who was dumb had his own way 
of expressing his patriotism when "Mansei" 
was yelled. He always lifted his arms above his 
head. He could not speak but he could yell with 
his arms! 

This placed the Japanese authorities in the 
ridiculous position of arresting a dumb man for 
yelling ''Mansei !" 

They tortured him, for months. He was told 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FREEDOM 153 

that he would be released if he would promise 
never to lift his hands above his head again. 

He could not speak in answer to their demands. 
They waited. 

Suddenly he caught their meaning. They were 
trying to frighten him from giving vent to his 
only method of showing his patriotism. 

His eyes flashed fire. He leapt to his feet with 
a contemptuous look at his Japanese captors. 

Then like flashng piston rods of steel his 
arms shot into the air above his head three times, 
shouting in their mute patriotism, *^Mansei! 
Mansei ! Mansei !" 

Nor are the w^omen void of this determination 
for freedom. It beats in their brave hearts. It 
is a great flame in their souls as well as in the 
hearts of the children and men of the peninsula. 

*^The soul's armor is never set well to heart 
unless a woman's hand has braced it, and it is 
only when she braces it loosely that the honor 
of manhood fails !" says Robert McKenna in 
^'The Adventure of Life." 

If that is a true definition of the strength of 
honor and the desire for freedom then the armor 
of the Korean men is well set. 
I Sauci, a young Korean girl was under arrest. 
She was just a school girl and very beautiful; 
with dark brown eyes ; skin the color of a walnut; 
and a form, bred of the grace of her much walk- 



154 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

ing race. She had walked the innumerable trails 
of her native land from babyhood and the 
rhythmic swing of her supple body would have 
made any race, save that of her conquerors, 
reverent with admiration. 

Sauci was too much for her Japanese captors. 

The Japanese guard struck her across the 
mouth with a whip. 

"That doesn't hurt me. That is the grace of 
God. I don't hate you for that blow!" said 
Sauci. 

This angered the Jap and he struck her again. 
This stroke left a streak of blood across her face. 

Sauci said again, ''That doesn't hurt me. That 
is the grace of God. I do not hate you for strik- 
ing me !" 

The gendarme was furious. His anger was 
like that of a beast. He flew at her blindly, and 
struck, struck, struck her woman's body until he 
was exhausted. 

A few days later when she was recovering from 
that brutal beating, a high official of the Japanese 
gendarme force came to see her. 

''Sauci," said he to her, recognizing her for an 
intelligent Korean girl, "why do not the Koreans 
like us?" 

She replied, "I had a dream last night here in 
the cell. That will tell you why. In my dream 
a visitor came to our home and stayed for dinner. 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FREEDOM 155 

Then instead of going home, the visitor stayed all 
night. Then the visitor stayed two or three days. 
Then two or three months. Then two or three 
years. We were surprised but were too polite to 
say anything. 

"But finally the visitor got to telling us how 
to run our house.'' 

"How?" asked the Japanese official, "Did the 
visitor tell you how to run your house?" 

"The visitor," replied Sauci, "told us that he 
didn't like our wall paper. T think you had bet- 
ter get new paper !' he said. ^I do not like your 
clothes and your schools. Wear clothes like mine, 
and have schools like mine. I do not like your 
way of talking. Learn my language!' 

"So finally we got tired of our visitor and said, 
Tlease go home ! WE do not like you ! We do 
not want you ! Please go home !' " 

"But what has that to do with us?" said the 
Japanese official. 

"Why in a few days the visitor in my dream 
went home!" said Sauci simply. "And in a few 
years the Japanese will go back home also !" Such 
is the courageous spirit of the Korean women. 
• ••«•• 

One day an American friend of mine had gone 
to the Police Station with a young Korean girl 
who had been summoned to appear on what was 
called a "rearrest charge." 



156 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

For the Japanese feel perfectly free to rearrest 
a person even after that person has been proven 
innocent of a charge. A Korean may be re- 
arrested any time. He can never feel free. 

This young, educated girl had been subjected 
to such indignities on her previous arrest as I 
would not be able to describe in this book; so she 
begged the woman friend to go with her. 

As she entered the station a rough, ignorant 
Japanese officer snarled at her as she passed, 
"Hello! Are you here again? I thought you 
were still in prison !" 

When he had gone from the room the Korean 
girl said to the American woman, "That man 
beat me for ten hours one day the last time I was 
in prison!" 

"Why did he beat you ?" asked the missionary. 

"He was trying to compel me to give him the 
names of those girls who belonged to the 
'Woman's League'." 

"And you would not tell him their names?" 

"I would rather have been beaten to death than 
give him their names !" 

"Thank God for your courage!" said the mis- 
sionary, for she had seen the girl's body when she 
had gotten out of prison; the burns of cigarette 
stumps all over her beautiful skin; the scars, the 
whip marks; the desecrations. 

When I was told this story, amid the tears of 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FREEDOM 157 

the narrator, an American college woman, she 
concluded with fire in her soul : "I have never seen 
such courage on the part of women in all my life! 
Even mere girls and children have it. Most of 
those who are arrested come out of our American 
Missionary schools. There isn't a one of them 
who doesn't have in her soul the spirit of Joan 
of Arc. If France had one Joan of Arc, Korea 
has ten thousand!" 

One young girl of whom I heard was kept in 
prison under constant torture for six months. 
And a cruel imprisonment it is. I visited this 
prison myself one winter day when I was in 
Korea. The thermometer was at zero ; the snow 
covered the ground, and there wasn't a fire in a 
single room in that prison save where the Japa- 
nese guards were staying, and they were huddled 
around a roaring coal stove. 

And this is the show prison of the whole Penin- 
sula. The Japanese take visitors through it. But 
to an American even it is fit only for the darkness 
of the Middle Ages. 

In its limited quarters I saw ten and fifteen 
young girls, sweet faced, cultured, educated 
school girls, huddled together in narrow rooms, 
without a single chair, so closely packed that they 
were seated on the floor like bees in a hive. 

After six months of this awful life the girl of 
whom I speak was about to be released. 



158 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

The guard questioned her. *'Now what are 
you going to do ?'' 

Her answer came, quick as a shot, although she 
knew that it would send her back to the hell 
from which she was about to be released. 

"It is either liberty for Korea or we die!" she 
said. 

And in three minutes, beaten, and dragged on 
the ground by the hair she was thrown into the 
cell from which she had been taken; to rot and 
die as far as the Japanese were concerned. 

Another girl who had been kept in jail 135 
days without even a charge having been preferred 
against her was released. Her old mother came 
to meet her and while in Seoul the mother at- 
tended an Independence Meeting for women. 
The whole crowd of women then went to the 
Police Station and shouted "Mansei" ! 

The mother was arrested and cruelly beaten in 
spite of her seventy-five years of age. 

When they were through beating her they said, 
"Now will you refrain from yelling, 'Mansei!' " 

"Never!" said this old woman. 

Then they took a bar of iron and beat her over 
the legs until she dropped. 

"Now will you refrain from yelling ^Mansei?' " 

The old woman was weak, but in a low, painful 
whisper said, "The next time the women come to 
yell, if I am able to walk I will be with them!" 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FREEDOM 159 

Another old woman was brought to prison for 
yelHng "Mansei!" When they asked her why 
she )xlled "Mansei" she answered in a sentence 
that sums up the entire spirit that is in the woman- 
heart of Korea. 

"I have only one word in my head and that is 
'Mansei!'" 

I personally, one. day in Korea, saw the Japa- 
nese gendarmes come for a Korean girl. She w^as 
one of the most popular girls in the American 
Methodist Missionary School. 

It was the common custom for Japanese offi- 
cials to come and take Korean girls out of these 
schools, without warning, without warrants, with- 
out words, and carry them off to prison. 

Often the girl was not even permitted to say 
good-by to her American teachers or to write a 
word to her parents. 

•''They are not even permitted to supply them- 
selves with toilet articles/' said the matron to me 
that day. 

On this day, six big, brutal, ugly faced, animal- 
like Japanese officers came for this beautiful girl. 

The missionary women wept as the girl was 
dragged away. The girl waved good-by. 

It was a sight never to be forgotten; one of 
those Flash-lights of Freedom, which burned its 
way into my soul with the hot acid of indigna- 
tion. This injustice and indecency in the treat- 



160 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

ment of a pure girl made my blood run hot in my 
veins. 

The look on her face I shall never forget. It 
was such a look as the martyrs of old must have 
had when they died for their faith. 

^'Good-by! Good-by! Give my love to Mary 
and Elizabeth!" she cried to the missionary 
woman standing by, helpless to assist her. These 
two names were children of the missionary home; 
children whom this Korean girl had learned to 
love as she lived in this American home. 

^'And the awful thing about it all, is," said the 
missionary to me as they took the girl away, 
"that, as pure as that girl is, as pure as a flower, 
she will be taken to a prison fifty miles from 
Seoul, kept there under torture for six months, 
and she will not be allowed to see her friends. 
They will not even allow us to visit her. She may 
be undressed and spat upon by men who are lower 
than animals. She may suffer even worse than 
that " 

Then the American missionary woman fainted. 

That flash-light may be duplicated a hundred 
times in Korea. 

"The woman of Korea suffers as much as the 
man. But thank God they do not flinch !" said an 
American missionary. 

The Japanese Gendarmes have forbidden the 
singing of several of the great church hymns in 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FREEDOM 161 

mission churches because they insist that these 
are hymns of Freedom; that they foment what the 
Japanese call "Dangerous Ideas." Japanese spies 
have reported certain Seoul Methodist churches 
for singing hymns that,, to their way of thinking, 
were directed against the Japanese Government. 
This particular illustration of the peculiar work- 
ings of the Japanese mind might have been in- 
cluded in the chapter on Flash-lights of Fun; 
were it not for the fact that the Japanese officers 
themselves call these old church hymns "Hymns 
of Freedom." 

The Japanese are just as much afraid of these 
"Dangerous Thoughts" in Japan as they are in 
Korea. A good illustration of this fear is the 
fact that a certain picture corporation of America 
called "The Liberty Film Company" sent several 
films to Japan. The Government would not allow 
these pictures to be shown until that word "Lib- 
erty" was cut from the film. 

Certain Japanese spies reported a Mission 
church in Seoul for singing "Rock of Ages." 

"But why may we not sing 'Rock of Ages'?" 
asked the American preacher in charge. 

"Because it starts off with 'Mansei !' " replied 
the officer. 

He interpreted the thought of "Rock of Ages" 
to be a direct imputation that the Japanese Gov- 
ernment was not able to take care of the Koreans 



162 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

and that they were flying to some other protect- 
ing power. 

"It would be funny if it were not so serious !" 
said a missionary to me one day in Seoul. 

Later they stopped the churches from singing 
"Nearer My God to Thee," because there seemed 
to be an implication in that, that those who sang 
that hymn, were swearing allegiance to a higher 
power than that of Japan. 

"Ridiculous! Absolutely ridiculous!" I said 
in disgust. 

"Yes, ridiculous, but serious," replied the mis- 
sionary, "when you have to live with it year in 
and year out." 

"Crown Him Lord of All," insisted the Jap- 
anese spies, when they seriously reported a certain 
church for singing that old hymn was "Danger- 
ous Thought." It seemed to this ignorant spy 
that "Crowning Him" was putting some other 
power before that of the Japanese Government. 

"All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name" has been 
put under the ban and when a certain missionary 
woman was asked to sing at the Korean Y.M.C.A. 
and announced that she was going to sing "Oh, 
Rest in the Lord" she was advised not to sing it 
because it was considered by the gendarmes to 
be "Dangerous Thought" and to suggest "Lib- 
erty," "Freedom" and such dangerous words and 
ideas. 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FREEDOM 163 

When one Protestant preacher prayed about 
"Casting Out Devils" he was reported by Jap- 
anese spies, who insisted that he was talking 
about Japanese in Korea and meant that these 
should be cast out of the land. 

'' 'It is to laugh !' as the French say Y' I re- 
sponded to this story. 

"No ! It is to weep !" said the American mis- 
sionary. 

When Dr. Frank W. Schoefield spoke against 
Prostitution the Japanese papers declared that he 
had made a virulent attack on the Government. 

One Korean preacher who preached on a theme 
from Luke 4:18, which reads "Setting the cap- 
tives free," was arrested and kept in jail for four 
days. 

"It is very foolish to yell 'Mansei' when you 
know you will be killed," I said to a Korean 
preacher. I wanted to see how he would take that 
suggestion. 

"We Koreans would rather be under the 
ground than on top of it if we do not get our lib- 
erty !" he said with a thrill in his quiet voice. 

One day a Korean preacher was arrested for 
preaching on the theme, "Seek ye first the King- 
dom of God and all these things shall be added 
unto you," because that was, without doubt, dis- 
loyal to Japan and meant rebellion. 

Another day a speaker in the Y.M.C.A. said. 



164 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

''Arise and let us build for the new age!" He 
was asked to report to Police Headquarters just 
what he meant by that kind of "Dangerous'' talk 
about Freedom. 



CHAPTER IX 

FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAILURE 

THREE great Flash-lights of Failure stand 
out in the Far East and the Oriental world 
to-day; one being the failure of a race to survive, 
another being the failure of the world to under- 
stand that Shantung is the Holy Land and not 
the appendix of China; this sacred shrine of the 
Chinese which has so carelessly and listlessly been 
given over to Japan; and the third being Japan's 
failure to understand that methods of barbarism 
from the Dark Ages will not work in a modern 
civilization. 

"Why are they making all this fuss over Shan- 
tung?" an acquaintance of mine said to me just 
before I left America. 'Isn't it just a sort of 
an appendix of China, after all? If I were the 
Chinese, I'd forget Shantung and go on to cen- 
tralize and develop what I had." 
. That was glibly said, but the fact which the 
statement leaves out of reckoning is that Shan- 
tung is the very heart and soul of China instead 
of being the appendix. 

The average American has so often thought of 

165 



166 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

China just as China ; a great, big, indefinite, far- 
off nation of four hundred million people, always 
stated in round numbers, that Shantung doesn't 
mean much to us. Yes, but it means much to 
China. 

It means about the same as if some nation 
should come along and take New England from 
us ; New England, the seat of all our most sacred 
history, the beginning of our national life, the 
oldest of our traditions, the burial-place of our 
early founders, the seat of our religious genesis. 
I don't believe that many folks in New England 
would desire to be called an appendix of the 
United States. 

So one of the things that I was determined to 
do when I went to China was to go from one end 
of Shantung to the other, talking with coolies,, 
officials, old men and young men, students, and 
those who can neither read nor write; mission- 
aries and soldiers; natives and foreigners; to 
see just what importance Shantung is to China 
as a whole. 

The first thing I discovered was that it has 
about forty million people living within the limits 
of the peninsula, close to half the population of 
the United States. Does that sound as if it might 
be China's appendix? You wouldn't think so 
if you saw the cities, roads and fields of this great 
stretch of land literally swarming with human 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAILURE 167 

beings, and every last one of them, as busy as 
ants. 

I rode one whole day across the peninsula. I 
happened to be traveling with a man from Kan- 
sas. He was a man interested in farming and 
wheat-growing. For hundreds of miles we had 
been passing through land that was absolutely 
level and every inch of it cultivated. I had been 
saying to myself over and over again, ^'Why, it's 
exactly like our Middle West Country." 

Then much to my astonishment this Kansas 
man turned to me, and said, "Did it ever occur to 
you that these fields of Shantung look just like 
Kansas ?" 

''Yes, it has just occurred to me this minute," I 
responded. 

Then the wife of the Kansas man said, "I have 
been shutting my eyes and trying to imagine that 
I was in Kansas, it's so much like home." 

"And say, man, but a tractor on those fields 
would work wonders," added a portion of Wil- 
liam Allen White's reading constituency. 

And that is exactly how Shantung strikes an 
American when he has ridden all day through 
its great stretches of level fields. He can easily 
imagine himself riding through Kansas for a day. 

My first visit to Shantung was at Tsingtao, the 
headquarters of the German concession and now 
of the Japanese concession. I spent a day there, 



168 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

and took photographs of the wharves and town. 
On the wharves were still standing hundreds of 
boxes marked with German names and the 
inevitable phrase ''Made in Germany." Those 
boxes were mute reminders of the evacuation of 
one nation from a foreign soil. But standing side 
by side with these boxes were also other hun- 
dreds, already being shot into Shantung in a 
steady stream ; and these boxes have a new trade- 
mark printed in every case in English and Japa- 
nese, "Made in Japan." 

I spent several days in Tsinanfu and Tientsin, 
two great inland cities, and more than a week in 
cruising about through Shantung's little towns, 
its villages and its sacred spots. 

I heard of its mines and of its physical wealth. 
But the world already knows of that. The world 
already knows that this physical wealth of mines 
and raw material was what made it look good to 
Germany and Japan. But the thing that im- 
pressed me was its spiritual wealth. 

The thing that makes Shantung attractive to 
the Japanese, of course, is not the spiritual wealth, 
as the world well knows. Perhaps the Japanese 
have never considered the latter any more than 
the Germans did ; but the one thing that makes it 
most sacred to the Chinese, who are, after all, a 
race of idealists, is its treasuries of spiritual 
memories and shrines. 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAILURE 169 

In the first place, many Chinese will tell you 
that it is the "cradle of the Chinese race." I am 
not sure that histories will confirm this state- 
ment. And I am also not sure that that makes any 
difference as long as the idea is buried in the 
heart of the Chinese people. A tradition often 
means as much to a race as a fact. And the tra- 
dition certainly is well established that Shantung 
is the birthplace of all Chinese history. So that 
is one of the deeply rooted spiritual facts that 
makes Shantung sacred to the Chinese. 

The second spiritual gold mine is that one of 
its cities, Chufu, is the birthplace and the last 
resting-place of the sage Confucius. And China 
is literally impregnated with Confusian phi- 
losophy and Confucian sayings. 

I took a trip to this shrine in order to catch 
some of the spiritual atmosphere of the Shantung 
loss. The trip made it necessary to tramp about 
fifteen miles coming and going through as dusty 
a desert as I ever saw,, but that was a trifle com- 
pared with the thrill that I had as I stood at last 
before the little mound about as high as a Cali- 
fornia bungalow; the mound that held the dust 
of this great Chinese sage. During the war I 
stood before the grave of Napoleon in France. 
Before I went to France I visited Grant's tomb. 
I have also stood many times beside a little mound 
in West Virginia, the resting-place of my mother. 



170 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

and I think that I know something of the sacred- 
ness of such experiences to a human heart, but 
somehow the thrill that came to me on that Janu- 
ary morning, warm with sunlight, spicy with win- 
ter cold,, produced a feeling too deep for mere 
printed words to convey. 

"If we feel as we do standing here on this 
sacred spot, think of how the Chinese feel toward 
their own sage!" said an old missionary of the 
party. 

''Yes,'' added another, "and remember that the 
Chinese revere their ancestors and their sages 
and their shrines more than we ever dream of 
doing. Any grave is a sacred spot to them, so 
much so that railroads have to run their trunk 
lines for miles in a detour to avoid graves. These 
Chinese are idealists of the first water. They 
live in the past, and they dream of the future." 

"When you get these facts into your American 
heads," added a third member of the party, not 
without some bitterness, "then you will begin to 
know that the Chinese do not estimate the loss of 
Shantung in terms of mineral wealth." 

At Chufu, the resting-place of Confucius, there 
is also the spot of his birth, and this too is most 
sacred to the Chinese nation. We visited both 
places. I think that I never before quite realized 
just what the loss of Shantung meant to these 
Chinese until that day, unless it was the next day, 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAILURE 171 

when we climbed the sacred mountain Taishan,, 
which is also in Shantung. 

''It is the oldest worshiping-place in the 
world/' said the historian of the party. "There is 
no other spot on earth where continuous worship 
has gone on so long. Here for more than twenty 
centuries before Christ was born men and women 
were worshiping. Emperors from the oldest 
history of China down to the present time have 
all visited this mountain to worship. Confucius 
himself climbed the more than six thousand steps 
to worship here." 

"Yes," said another missionary historian, "and 
this mountain is referred to twelve separate times 
in the Chinese classics, and great pilgrimages 
were made here as long ago as two centuries be- 
fore Christ." 

That day we climbed the mountain up more 
than six thousand stone steps, which are in perfect 
condition and which were engineered thousands 
of years ago by early worshipers. 

The only climb with which I can compare that 
of Mt. Taishan is that of Mt. Tamalpais over- 
looking San Francisco. The climb is about equal 
to that. The mountain itself is about a mile in 
height, and the climb is a hard one to those who 
are unaccustomed to mountain-climbing, and yet 
thousands upon thousands climb it every year 
after pilgrimages from all over China. 



ITS FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

We climbed to the top of Taishan, and saw the 
"No-Character Stone'' erected by Emperor Chin, 
he who tried to drive learning out of China hun- 
dreds of years ago. We saw the spot on which 
Confucius stood, and glimpsed the Pacific Ocean, 
ninety miles away, on a clear day. It was a hard 
climb; but, when one stood on the top of this, the 
most sacred mountain of all China, he began to 
understand the spiritual loss that is China's when 
her worshiping-place is in the hands of aliens. 

''And don't forget that Mencius, the first dis- 
ciple of Confucius, was born and died in Shan- 
tung, too, when you are taking census of the 
spiritual values of Shantung to the Chinese," was 
a word of caution from the old missionary who 
was checking up on my facts for me. He had 
been laboring in China for a quarter of a century. 

*'And don't forget that the Boxer uprising orig- 
inated in Shantung, and don't forget that it is 
called, and has been for centuries,, 'the Sacred 
Province' by the Chinese. It is their 'Holy 
Land.' And don't forget that, from Shantung, 
coolies went to South Africa in the early part 
of this century and that the Chinese from Shan- 
tung were the first to get in touch with the west- 
ern world. And don't forget that nine-tenths of 
the coolies who went to help in the war in France 
were from Shantung!" he added with emphasis. 
This was a thing that I well knew, for I had, only 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAILURE 173 

a few weeks before this, seen two thousand coolies 
unloaded from the Empress of Asia at Tsingtao. 

No, Shantung is not an appendix of China, as 
many Americans suppose; but it is the very heart 
and soul of China. It is China's "Holy Land/' 
It is the "Cradle of China." It is the "Sacred 
Province of China." It is the shrine of her great- 
est sage. It is the home of "the oldest worship- 
ing-place on earth." It is because of its spir- 
itual values that China is unhappy about the loss 
of Shantung, and not because of its wealth of 
material things. 

The failure of the world to understand what 
Shantung means to China and the failure of 
Japan to understand that they cannot for many 
years stand out against the indignation of the 
entire world in continuing to keep Shantung is 
one of the great spiritual failures of the Far East 
in our century. 

The second great failure is the tragic failure of 
an entire race of people; that of the Ainu Indians 
of Japan. 

It is a pathetic thing to see a human race dying 
out; coming to "The End of the Trail." But I 
was determined to see them, in spite of the fact 
that people told me I would have to travel from 
one end of Japan to the other ; and then cross four 
hours of sea before I got to Hokkaido, the most 



174 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

northern island of Japan, where lived the tattered 
remnants of this once noble race. 

The name of this dying race is pronounced as 
if it were spelled I-new with a long L 

These are the people who inhabited Japan be- 
fore the present Japanese entered the land from 
Korea and drove them, inch by inch, back and 
north and west across Japan. It was a stubborn 
fight, and it has lasted many centuries ; but to-day 
they have been driven up on the island of Hok- 
kaido, that northern frontier of Japan where the 
overflow of Japan is pouring at the rate of four 
thousand a year, making two million to date and 
only about fifty thousand of them Ainus. 

"Are they like our American Indians in looks, 
since their history is so much like them ?'' I asked 
my missionary friend. 

"Wait until you see them, and decide for your- 
self. I know very little about American Indians." 

So one morning at three o'clock, after travel- 
ing for two days and nights from one end of 
Japan to the other, and then crossing a strait be- 
tween the Japan Sea and the Pacific Ocean to the 
island, we climbed from our train, and landed 
in a little country railroad station. 

It was blowing a blizzard, and the snow 
crashed into our faces with stinging, whip-like 
snaps. 

I was appointed stoker for the small stove in 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAILURE 175 

the station while the rest of the party tried to 
sleep on the benches arranged in a circle, huddled 
as close as they could get to the stove. 

We were the first party of foreigners of this 
size that had ever honored the village with a 
visit. And in addition to that we had come at 
an unearthly hour. 

Who but a group of insane foreigners would 
drop into a town at three o'clock in the morning 
with a blizzard blowing? Either we were insane, 
or we had some sinister motives. Perhaps we 
were making maps of the seacoast. 

And before daylight half of the town v/as peek- 
ing in through the windows at us. Then the 
policemen came. They were Japanese policemen, 
and did not take any chances on us. Even after 
our interpreter had told them that we were a 
group of scientists who had come to visit the 
Ainus they still followed us around most of the 
morning, keeping polite track of our movements. 

About five o'clock that morning, as I was try- 
ing to catch a cat-nap, the newsboys of the village 
came to get the morning papers which had come 
in on the train on which we had arrived. They 
unbundled the papers in the cold station; their 
breath forming clouds of vapor; laughing and 
joking as they unrolled, folded and counted the 
papers; and arranged their routes for morning 
delivery. 



176 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

It took me back to boyhood days down in West 
Virginia. I did the same thing as these Japanese 
boys were doing. I, too, arose before daylight, 
cHmbed out of bed, and went whistling through 
the dark streets to the station where the early 
morning trains dumped off the papers from the 
city. I, too, along with several other Ameri- 
can boys of a winter morning, breathed clouds 
of vapor into the air, stamped my feet to keep 
them warm, and whipped my hands against my 
sides. I, too, unwrapped the big bundles of 
papers, and did it in the same way in which these 
Japanese boys did,, by smashing the tightly bound 
wrappers on the floor until they burst. I, too, 
counted, folded, put in inserts, arranged my 
paper-route and darted out into the frosty air 
with the snow crunching under my feet. How 
universal some things are. The only difference 
was that these boys were dressed in a sort of 
buccaneer uniform. They had on high leather 
boots, and belts around their coats that made them 
look as if they had stepped out of a Richard 
Harding Davis novel. But otherwise they went 
through the same processes as an Am^erican boy 
in a small town. 

When the vanguard of villagers had come to 
inspect us, they at first tried to talk Russian to 
us. They had never seen any other kind of for- 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAH^URE 177 

eigners. They had never seen Americans in this 
far-off island. 

When daylight came, we started out on a long 
tramp to the Ainu villages. They were a mile or 
two away on the ocean. These people always 
build near the sea if they can. Fishing is one of 
their main sources of food. 

We spent the day in their huts. They live like 
animals. A big, square hut covered with rice 
straw and thatch, with a fence of the same kind 
of straw running around the house, forms the 
residence. The only fire is in the middle of the 
only room,, and this consists of a pile of wood 
burning on a flat stone or piece of metal in the 
center. There is no chimney in the roof, and 
not even an opening such as the American Indians 
had in the tops of their tepees. I do not know 
how they live. The smoke finds its way gradu- 
ally through cracks in the walls and roofs. One 
can hardly find a single Ainu whose eyes are not 
ruined. The smoke has done this damage. 

The only opening in their houses besides the 
door is one north window, and it is never closed. 
In fact, there is no window. It is only an opening. 

''Why is that? Fd think they would freeze on 
a day like this,'' I said to the guide. 

"They keep it that way all winter, and it gets 
a good deal below zero here," he said. 



178 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

"But why do they do it?" old Shylock de- 
manded. 

"It is part of their religion. They believe that 
the god comes in that window. They want it open, 
so that he can come in whenever he wishes. It 
offends them greatly when you stick your head 
through that window." 

Pat tried it just to see what would happen, 
just like a man who looks into the barrel of a 
gun, or a man who takes a watch apart, or wants 
to hit a "dud" with a hammer just to see whether 
it is a dud. The result was bad. There was a 
sudden series of outlandish yells from the house- 
hold. I think that every man, woman and child,, 
including the dogs, of which there were many, 
started at once. I wonder now how Pat escaped 
alive, and only under the assumption that "the 
good die young" can I explain his escape. 

I wanted some arrows to take to America as 
souvenirs; and, when an old Indian pulled out a 
lot of metal arrows on long bows with which he 
had killed more than a hundred bears,, I was not 
satisfied. They were not the kind of arrows I 
:wanted. 

"What kind are you looking for?" I was asked. 

"FHnt arrow-heads," I responded. 

"Why, man, these Indians have known the use 
Df metals for five hundred years. The stone 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAILURE 179 

age with them is half a thousand years in the 
past." 

^'Have they a history?'' I wanted to know. 

My interpreter, who has much knowledge of 
these things, having worked among them for 
years, said, "All of the Japanese mythology is 
centered about the battles that took place when 
these Indians were driven out of Japan proper 
step by step." 

I was surprised to find that they were white 
people compared with the Japanese who were 
their conquerors. There are other marked dif- 
ferences. The Ainus are broad between the eyes 
instead of narrow as are the Japanese. They are 
rather square-headed like Americans as com- 
pared with the oval of the Japanese face. They 
do not have markedly slant eyes, and they are 
white-skinned. They might feel at home in any 
place in America. I have seen many old men at 
home who look like them, old men with beards. 
This came as a distinct surprise to me. 

At each house, just in front of the ever-open 
window of which I have spoken, there is a little 
crude shrine. It is more like a small fence than 
anything that I know, a most crude affair made 
of broken bamboo poles. Flowers and vines are 
planted here to beautify this shrine, and every 
pole has a bear-skull on it. The more bear-skulls 



180 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

you have,, the safer you are and the more religious 
you have become. 

Pat was sacrilegious enough to steal a skull 
in order to get the teeth, which he wanted as 
souvenirs. I was chagrined and shocked at Pat's 
lack of religious propriety. However, I was en- 
ticed into accepting one of the teeth after Pat 
had knocked them out and stolen them,. 

"How do they worship bears and kill them at 
the same time?" I queried the guide. 

"That's a part of the worship. They kill the 
bear, slowly singing and chanting as they kill 
him. They think that the spirit of every bear 
that they kill comes into their own souls. That's 
why they kill so many. That seventy-year-old 
rascal over there has killed a hundred. He is a 
great man in his tribe." 

"If I was a bear," commented Pat,, "I'd rather 
they wouldn't worship me. That's a funny way 
to show reverence to a god. I'd rather be their 
devil and live than be their god and die." Pat 
is sometimes loquacious. "They dance about the 
poor old bear as they kill him. One fellow will 
hurl an arrow into his side, and then cry out, 'O 
spirit of the great bear-god, come enter into me, 
and make me strong and brave like you ! Come, 
take up thine abode in my house! Come, be a 
part of me! Let thy strength and thy courage 
be my strength and my courage !' " 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAILURE 181 

*Then," said the interpreter, "he hurls another 
arrow into him." 

''And what is Mr. Bear doing all that time?" 

''Mr. Bear is helpless. He is captured first 
in a trap, and then kept and fattened for the 
killing. He is tied to a tree during the killing 
ceremony." 

"All I gotta say is that they're darned poor 
sports," said Flintlock with indignation. "They're 
poor sports not to give Mr. Bear a fighting 

chance." 

And old Flintlock has voiced the sentiments of 

the entire party. 

Everybody that was at the Panama Pacific 
International Exposition will remember the mag- 
nificent statue of an Indian there. This Indian 
was riding a horse,, and both were worn out and 
drooping. A spear which dragged on the ground 
in front of the pony was further evidence of the 
weariness of the horse and rider. The title of 
this Eraser bronze was "The End of the Trail," 
and it was intended to tell the story of a vanishing 
race, the American Indians. But even more could 
that picture tell the story of the Ainus of Japan. 

"They will be entirely extinct in a quarter of a 
century," our guide said. "They are going fast. 
They used to be vigorous and militant, as Jap- 
anese mythology shows. They were a fighting 
race. They built their houses by the sea. They 



182 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

used to go out for miles to fish, but now they are 
so petered out that they^o only to the mouths of 
the rivers to fish. They used to hunt in the moun- 
tains,, but they do not take hunting-trips any 
more. Venereal diseases and rum (saki) have 
depleted them year by year, just as in the case 
of our American Indians. They are largely sterile 
now. They used to build their own boats, but 
they build no more. It is a biological old age. 
Their day is through." 

*Tt is a sad thing to see a race dying out," said 
Pat. 

"Especially a white race, as these Ainus seem 
to be," said another member of the party. 

And back to the village we went silently, plod- 
ding through a driving blizzard that bore in upon 
us with terrific force. As we fought our way 
through this blizzard, I could not help feeling a 
great sense of depression. It is a fearful thing 
to see anything die, especially a race of human 
beings. That is a great epic tragedy worthy of 
a Shakespeare. That is enough to wring the soul 
of the gods. That a race has played the game, 
has been powerful and conquering and trium- 
phant, and then step by step has petered out and 
become weak and senile until biological decay has 
set in — that is fearful. 

Another illustration of the ignominious failure 
of a lower type of mind to understand a higher 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAILURE 183 

type of mind is set forth in the following letter 
which was written at my request by a missionary 
whom I met in San Francisco just as the final 
chapters of this book were being written. 

The first time I met this missionary was in 
Seoul, Korea. 

I have been told so many times that the cruel- 
ties in Korea have been stopped. Certain men 
said that they had been stopped immediately after 
the Independence Movement, but they were not 
stopped. At frequent intervals the American 
press is flooded with statements which come from 
Japanese press sources that the outrages in Korea 
have ceased. 

I said to this missionary, who had just arrived 
from Korea, "Is it true that the cruelties have 
stopped in Korea?'' 

"No ! They have not stopped ! They have not 
even diminished ! They are getting worse, rather 
than better !" 

"Would you be willing to write out, in your 
own handwriting, a few things that you know 
yourself which have occurred since I was in Korea 
so that the book which I am writing may be ac- 
curate and up to date in its facts ?" 

"I will be glad to do that for you! We who 
are missionaries dare not speak the truth !" 

"Why?" 



184 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

"If we did the Japanese Government would 
never let us get back to our people !" 

''Then you may talk through me, if you are 
willing to do it. I want the truth to get to the 
American people!" 

"I am not only willing but I am eager to talk'/' 
said this missionary and wrote out the following 
story of cruelty against an educated and cultured 
Korean, who was the Religious and Educational 
Director in the Seoul Y.M.C.A. This story of 
the latest Japanese barbarisms I pass on to the 
reader in this chapter to illustrate another ig- 
nominious Hun failure to understand that the 
practices of the Dark Ages will not work in this 
century : 

"On May 26th, 1920, just as Mr. Choi was coming out 
of his class room he was met by two detectives, one 
Korean and one Japanese, who informed him that he was 
wanted at the Central Police Station. Here he was 
turned over to the Chief of Police and thrown into a room 
and kept ail day. Mr. Brockman and Cynn both made 
several attempts to find out why he was arrested. Each 
time they v/ere given an evasive answer. Finally Mr. 
Cynn insisted that they tell him the cause of the arrest. 
It was finally discovered that he was wanted in Pyengyang 
on certain charges. He was to leave Seoul that evening 
on the II p.m. train. Anxious to see how Mr. Choi was 
being treated, Mr. Cynn and several of the Y.M.C.A. 
men went down to the station. Mr. Choi with the other 
six students were standing on the platform. Apparently 
Mr. Choi was not bound as is the usual custom. Closer 
observation, however, revealed the fact that his hands 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAILURE 185 

were bound with cords, but in his case the ropes were 
placed on the inside instead of the outside, of the clothes. 
He arrived in Pyengyang the next day, May 27, at 5 p.m. 
Instead of taking Mr. Choi first they called in one of the 
students whose name is Chai Pony Am. After the usual 
preliminary questions these inquisitors of the Dark Ages 
said, 'We know all about you — everything you have done. 
There is no use for you to deny anything. You make a 
clean confession of everything.' Mr. Choi replied, T 
have done nothing. If I knew what you wanted, I v/ould 
tell you.' More pressure was urged in the way of bom- 
bastic speech. Finally the police said, 'If you v/on't tell 
of your own free will we will make you tell !' Then the 
tortures, which the Government published broadcast had 
been done away with, began. They brought out a round 
stool with four legs and laid it down on its side with the 
sharp legs up and made him strip naked. Then they took 
the silken bands (about 2 in. wide) and placing his hands 
behind his back until the shoulder blades touched begun 
bending the arm from the wrist very tight. This com- 
pleted, they made him kneel upon the sharp edge of the 
legs of the stool with his shins. Then they took the 
bamboo paddle (this is made of two strips of bamboo 
about 2 in. wide and 2 ft. long wound with cord) and 
begun beating him on the head, face, back, feet and thighs. 
Every time they struck him his body would move and the 
movement cause the shins to rub on the sharp edges of 
the stool. To further increase the pain they took lighted 
cigarettes and burnt his flesh. This was continued until 
the student fainted and fell off. They then would restore 
the patient by artificial respiration and when he refused 
to confess, continued the torture. This process was con- 
tinued for 45 minutes and then the student was put into 
a dark cell and kept for three days. Upon the third day 
he was again brought before these just policemen and 
asked if he were ready to confess. Said they, *If you do 
not tell us this time we will kill you. You see how the 
waters of the Tai Pong (the river at Pyengyang) wear 
smooth these stones. That is what we do with those who 
come in here. Many have been killed in here. Your life 



186 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

is not worth as much as a fly/ He was tortured in the 
same manner as before and then put back into the cell 
for another three days. This process was continued every 
three days for two weeks. 

"When Mr. Choi, the educational director of the 
Y.M.C.A. was called in the police said, 'You are an 
educated gentleman and we propose to give you the gen- 
tleman's treatment. We do not want to treat you like 
ordinary men. Now we want you to tell us what your 
thoughts have been and are. Make a confession of any- 
thing you have done since March ist, 1919.' Mr. Choi 
said, 'What do you want me to confess? If you will 
give me a little time I will write you out something.* This 
they refused to do and said, 'Since you refuse to tell us 
we will make you tell. We will treat you like all other 
dogs.' Then they forcibly took off his clothes, and pro- 
ceeded to bind him in the same manner as the previous 
student. After being bound he was placed on the stool 
and beaten. He did not lose his consciousness but fell off 
the stool, and then was placed back and the same process 
continued. When Mr. Choi fell off the stool the bands 
on his arms were loosened and they proceeded to unloosen 
and rewind his arms. This time they wound them tighter 
than before. At the ends of these bands are brass rings 
which are placed next to the flesh and made to press upon 
the nerves. This time Mr. Choi said as they wound his 
right arm he felt a sharp pain and at once noticed that he 
had lost the use of his arm. It was paralyzed. Mr. Choi 
was tortured five times in all — one every three days. The 
first torture lasted one hour and the succeeding ones were 
less severe than the first. At the end of two weeks, June 
loth, Mr. Choi and the six students with him were called 
before a police captain who said to the students, 'There is 
nothing against you. Some bad Korean has testified falsely 
against you. We are sorry you have suffered but you can 
now go free.' However to Mr. Choi he said, 'You must 
remain here a week yet. You are still under police super- 
vision. Go to hotel and stay.* On June i6th the 

police came to the hotel where he was staying and said, 
'You may go down to Seoul tonight.' Mr. Choi arrived 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FAILURE 187 

in Seoul on the 17th and gave this testimony. His arm 
is still paralyzed." 

And so it is that these great failures stand 
out: the failure of a race of people to survive; 
the failure of the American people to estimate the 
loss of Shantung at its proper valuation spir- 
itually, and the failure of Japan to understand 
that Korea is still and ever shall be Korea the 
Unconquered; this Korea v^hich I call "The Wild 
Boar at Bay." 



CHAPTER X 

FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIENDSHIP \ 

WE were running down the Samabs River \ 

in a small Dutch ship, the Merkeus. \ 

This river, running almost parallel to the j 

Equator, and not more than fifty miles away from j 

that well-known institution, cuts the western end j 

of Borneo in two,, and lends phenomenal fertility | 

to its soil. I 

Shooting around a bend in the river, suddenly j 

there loomed on the western shores, so close that I 

we could throw a stone and hit it, a tree that was ' 

leafless, dead as a volcanic dump; but its dead ^ 

branches literally swarmed with monkeys. The i 

light in the west had so far gone that they ap- \ 

peared as silent silhouettes against the sunset. ; 

Their tails, which seemed to be about three feet ! 

long, and were curled at the ends, hung below the i 

dead branches. One big fellow had perched him- \ 

self on the tiptop of the tree, and in the dim light \ 

ne looked like a human sentinel as his black out- ' 

line appeared against the evening light. \ 

Then came Missionary Worthington's story \ 

about Kin Thung, the boy who, with character- 

189 \ 



190 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

istic Oriental spirit, had quick murder in his 
heart : 

''It was while I was the head of the Boys' 
School down in Batavia, Java, that it happened. 
One has experiences out here in dealing with 
youth that he does not get at home, for it is in- 
flammable material, explosive to the highest de- 
gree.'' 

I waited for his story to continue as the Dutch 
ship glided swiftly down the river toward the 
South China Sea, and night settled over us as 
we sat there on the upper deck, watching the 
crimson glory change into sudden purple. 

"I heard a noise and I knew there was a fight 
on in the dormitory. I had seen the aftermath 
of such Malay and Chinese feuds in our schools 
before,, and I knew that it was no trivial matter, 
as it often is with boy fights at home, so I hurried 
up. 

"When I got there I saw Kin Thung wiping 
his knife, and the boy he had been fighting lying 
on the floor, bleeding from a long wound." 

''What had happened?" 

"Kin Thung was a quick-tempered boy. In 
addition to that, he was of a sullen make-up, 
with, what I call, a criminal tendency in him. 
That, added to his already volatile spirit, made 
him a real problem in the school. For instance, 
he was the kind of a boy who, if a teacher called 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIENDSHIP 191 

on him without warning to recite, he would get 
uncontrollably angry, turn sullen and refuse to 
answer/' 

"Why didn't you fire him?" I said. 

''That would have been the easy thing to do. 
I preferred to win him rather than to fire him!'' 

I felt ashamed of myself for my suggestion, 
and looked out into the night skies where the 
beautiful form of the southern cross loomed in 
the zenith. 

''No, I didn't fire him." 

"What did you do?" 

"As I was dressing the boy's wound Kin Thung 
stood looking on, utterly expressionless and un- 
repentant, even sullen. 

"I didn't say anything to Kin that night, save 
to ask him to come to the ofhce the next day. 

"The other boys were calling out to him as he 
entered, and I could hear them through the win- 
dow, 'I wonder how many strokes of the rattan 
he will get?' for that is one of our forms of 
punishment. 

"He was no doubt wondering himself when 
he entered, still sullen. 

"I said to him, 'Kin, I could give you as punish- 
ment a hundred strokes of the rattan. I could 
put you on rice and water for a month, or I could 
put you to a room for a week in solitary con- 



19S FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

finement. But I am not going to do either or 
any of them. I am going to pray for you !" 

" 'I don't want you to, sir !' he cried in alarm. 

" 'Kneel down !' I said to him,. 

" 'I don't want to.' 

" 'Kneel down, I say !' 

"'I won't!' 

'''But this is your punishment. You would 
submit to the rattan if I imposed that. You must 
submit to this !' I said. 

" 'I hate prayer !' 

" 'Kneel down, boy !' 

"He knelt. I prayed. He wept." 

This was the cryptic way the missionary came 
to the climax of his story. Again the Southern 
Cross shot into view as we turned a curve in the 
river. 

"The fountain broke. A boy's heart was won ! 
I didn't have to fire him. I won him !" 

"That lad came to me two years later as he 
started out from our school in Batavia, and said, 
'Mr. Worthington, that moment when you called 
me into your office was the crucial moment of my 
life. If you had been unkind to me then; if you 
had punished me, even as much as I deserved it ; 
if you had not been Christ-like, I should have 
killed you. I had my knife ready. There was a 
demon in me! Your kindness, your praying for 
me,, broke something inside of me. I guess it was 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIENDSHIP 193 

my heart. I cried. I prayed. That morning 
saved my soul !' " 

"That was a marvelous experience, Mr. Mis- 
sionary! It was a marvelous way to meet the 
situation," I said in a low tone, looking up at the 
white outline of the Southern Cross, and remem- 
bering two thieves. 

*'It was Christ's way !" said the missionary. 

But perhaps the outstanding Flash-light of na- 
tional Friendship is that of America for the 
Philippines. I shall never forget the day we 
started southward from winter-bound China for 
sun-warmed Manila. 

As the great ship swung about in the muddy 
waters of the Yangsti and turned southward, 
the bitter winds of winter were blowing across 
her deserted decks. But in two days one felt 
not only a breath of warm tropical winds on his 
face but he also felt a breath of warmer friend- 
ship blowing into his soul as he thought of the 
Philippines and America. 

The first breath of warm winds from southern 
tropical seas gently kissed one's cheeks that after- 
noon. It was a soothing breath of romance, 
freighted with the scent of tropical trees. It was 
much of a contrast with the bitter winter winds 
that had blown the day before at Shanghai. There 
the snow was flying, and woolen suits were 
greatly needed. 



194 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

But to-night men and women alike walk the 
decks of this Manila-bound ship. They are all 
in white. One stands at the bow of the ship, glad 
to catch the salt spray on tanned cheeks, glad to 
feel the sea-touched winds playing with his hair, 
glad to see fair women of the Orient tanned with 
summer suns ; for it is summer in the Philippines, 
while winter reigns in China and the rest of the 
Oriental lands further north. 

Last night we passed the narrow straits lead- 
ing out of Shanghai harbor directly south. Two 
lighthouses blinked through the dusk of evening, 
the one to the north in short sharp notes, like a 
musician of the sea singing coasts,, rapidly beat- 
ing time. The light to the south seemed to count 
four in blinks and then hold its last count like a 
note of music. In between the two lighthouses 
vague, dim, mist-belted mountains of the China 
coast loomed through the dusk. 

This morning and all day long we have been 
sailing past the huge outlines of mountainous 
Formosa, that rich island off the coast of China, 
between Shanghai and Manila. It looks like 
some fairly island with its coves and caves, into 
which pours the purple sea, visible through the 
faint mists of morning and noontime. Its pre- 
cipitous sides shoot down to the sea in great bare 
cliffs, save where, here and there, a beauti- 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIENDSHIP 195 

ful bay runs in from the southern sea to kiss the 
green lips of the land. 

But now the sun is setting-. I am watching it 
from my stateroom window. 

• ••••• 

And now it is the rainy season in the Philip- 
pines. 

It doesn't rain in Luzon; it opens up clouds, 
and oceans suddenly drop to the land. Lakes and 
rivers form overnight. Bridges wash out, fields 
are inundated, houses by thousands are swept 
away, and railroad tracks twisted and played 
with, as if they were grappled by gigantic fists. 

Men will tell you of the great Typhoon that 
suddenly dropped out of the mountains at Baguio, 
sliced ofif a few sections of the mountains, rushed 
down through the great gorge, and left in its 
trail the iron ruins of eight or ten bridges, put in 
by American engineers, founded on solid granite ; 
but swept away like playthings of wood, in an 
hour. 

• ••••• 

One night we were driving from Baguio to 
Manila. 

A storm dropped suddenly out of the nowhere. 
We had no side curtains on, and in just three 
minutes we were soaked to the skin, and dripping 
streams of water. The artesian wells along the 



196 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

way were but dribbling springs compared with 
us. 

The storm came out of a clear, star-lit sky. 
Storms come that way in the Philippines. Only 
a few minutes before I had been looking up at 
the Southern Cross admiring its beauty. I looked 
again and there was no Southern Cross. A few 
great drops of rain fell and then came the deluge. 

Candle lights flickered in innumerable thatched 
houses where brown and naked women fluttered 
about dodging the rain, looking strangely like 
great paintings in the night. At the edge of each 
side porch a Bamboo ladder reached up from the 
ground. A fire burned against the rain. This fire 
leapt up for two feet. 

One could easily imagine on this stormy night, 
with every road a river, every field a flood, and 
every vacant space a sea, that the thatched houses 
raised on Bamboo poles were boats, afloat in a 
great ocean. The fires on the back porches looked 
for all the world like the fires that I have seen 
flaring against the night from Japanese fishing 
boats. 

We had been warm, personal friends since col- 
lege days, this driver and L He had chosen the 
harder way of the mission fields to spend his life. 

"After all," said he, "that was a dream worth 
dreaming !" 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIENDSHIP 197 

"What do you mean?" I asked him, a bit 
startled. 

'Why the American occupation of these 
islands ; the dream, that McKinley had, of teach- 
ing them to govern themselves; and then giving 
them their independence; an Imperial Dream 
such as the world never heard of before; a dream 
that, if it has done nothing else, has won for 
America the undying friendship of the intelligent 
Filipino." 

''Right you are, man ! But why such a thought 
at this ungodly hour ? I should think rather that 
you would be sending out an S. O. S." 

"Dunno ! Just flashed over me that that was a 
dream worth dreaming; and, by gad, boy, we're 
seeing it come to pass. Look at those contented 
people living in peace and security; their home 
fires lighted; their children in school; plenty to 
eat; not afraid that to-morrow morning some 
Friar will sell their home from under them. No 
wonder they have given their undying friendship 
to America!" 

He continued as we sped through the rain. 

"England and Germany sneered at America's 
dream. Such a dream of friendship through 
serving its colony had never been born in any 
other national soul from the Genesis of coloniza- 
tion up to this day, save in the soul of America 
in the Philippines. We have set the ideals of the 



198 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

world in many ways but never in a more marked j 

way than this. ] 

"The Phoenicians were the first colonizers and I 

they swept the Mediterranean with a policy of i 

exploitation and slavery which was selfish and i 

sordid. Then came Greece which had some such " 

ideal of colonization as America. Her ideal was, • 

that colonies, like fruit from a tree, when ripe, [ 

should fall off of the mother tree. Or the ideal i 

of Greece was that colonizing- should come about \ 

like the swarming of bees.'' j 

I nodded my head. He went on as we slashed ) 

through the muddy ways, "Rome with her Im- j 

perial dream, her army to back it up, failed as | 

have failed both Germany and Japan; three na- \ 

tions with kindred ideals as to colonization. | 

"Venice was cruel, adventurous and rapacious j 

in her colonizing policy on the Black Sea and she ] 

left a record of exploitations which makes a black j 

blotch on the world's pages. i 

"Modern colonization began with Spain in \ 

South America, Mexico and the Philippines. ; 

Spain has nothing over which to boast in that | 

record. The Dutch in Java, the record of Bel- i 

gium in the Congo ; that of the Portuguese in the | 

Far East; the French in Africa; the English in , 

India; Germany in China and Africa, and Japan j 

in Korea,, have not been entirely for the service of ] 

the subjected people, for all of these Governments i 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIENDSHIP 199 

have gone on the fundamental theory that the 
colony exists for the Mother States." 

He paused a moment as we made a cautious 
way around a big caribou. ^'Then came the great 
dream of America that the Mother State exists 
for the benefit of the colony. 

''Elihu Root said, 'We have declared a trust 
for the benefit of the people of the Philippine 
Islands !' 

''President William McKinley said : 'The gov- 
ernment is designed not for exploitation nor for 
our own satisfaction, or for the expression of our 
theoretical views, but for the happiness, peace 
and prosperity of the people of the Philippine 
Islands.' 

"Ex-President Taft said when he was Gov- 
ernor-General of the Islands: 'The chief differ- 
ence between the English policy and treatment 
of tropical peoples and ours, arises from the fact 
that we are seeking to prepare them under our 
guidance for popular self-government. We are 
attempting to do this, first by primary and secon- 
dary education offered freely to the Filipino 
people.' 

"This spirit has won the undying friendship of 
the Filipino people. True enough, they will finally 
want their independence. That is natural, but 
there is a deep love for America buried in their 
hearts because America has been square with 



200 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

them; has fulfilled her promises; has not ex- 
ploited them, but has served them. That is why 
I call the colonization policy of America here in 
the Philippines a dream worth dreaming." My 
friend was right. 

"We love America,, because America is our 
friend!" said a humble fisherman to me one day 
on the banks of the Pasig. 

''Yes, the United States; it is our own! You 
are our brothers!" said a Filipino boy who had 
been educated in a Mission school. 

"We are no longer our own. We belong to 
America. You have bought us with a price ! It 
cost the blood of American soldiers to buy us!" 
said an old Filipino, gray with years, but high in 
the councils of the Government. 

• ■ • • • ' • 

One night on the Lunetta the Filipino Band 
was playing. It was a beautiful evening with a 
sunset that lifted one into the very skies with 
its bewildering glory and ecstasy. I had been 
sitting there, drinking in the beautiful music 
made by the world-famous Constabulary Band, 
and watching the quicksilver-like changing colors 
of the sunset. Then the band started to play 
"The Star Spangled Banner." I was so lost in 
the sunset and the music that I did not notice. 

I heard a sudden stirring. Brown bodies, half- 
naked Filipinos all about me, had leapt to their 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIENDSHIP 201 

feet at the playing of our national hymn. Beauti- 
ful Filipino women in their dainty and delicately 
winged gowns, bare brown shoulders heaving 
with pride and friendship, stood reverently. Fili- 
pino soldiers all over the Lunetta stood at atten- 
tion facing the flag, the Stars and Stripes wav- 
ing in the winds from the old walled city. Side 
by side with American soldiers who had just re- 
turned from Siberia stood Filipino Constabulary 
soldiers. Side by side with well-dressed Ameri- 
can children stood half -naked Filipino children 
at reverent attention, paying a wholesome respect 
to the Stars and Stripes as the old hymn swept 
across the Lunetta. 

"That is a thrilling thing to see V* I said to a 
friend. 

'It could not have happened ten years ago!" 
he replied. 

"Why?" 

"They did not trust us, and they did not love 
us. They had seen too much of the selfish coloni- 
zation policies of Spain. They expected the same 
things from America. It did not come. They 
have been won to us!" 

This warm-hearted friendship is not true either 
of England's colonies anywhere in the Orient or 
of Japan's in Formosa or Korea. It is true alone 
in the Philippines. 



202 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

While I was in the Philippines, down in San 
Fernando, a statue was erected to a well-known 
rebel. He was a man who had refused to take 
the oath of allegiance to America when we cap- 
tured the islands. He escaped and carried on a 
propaganda against us. But when he died and 
a request was made that a statue be erected to his 
memory, the United States granted this permis- 
sion. 

At the dedication of this statue the Governor 
of this Province said that he doubted if any na- 
tion on the face of the earth, save the United 
States, would have permitted the erection of such 
a statue to a rebel against that government. "That 
act will bind our hearts closer to the heart of 
the United States!" he said in closing his ad- 
dress. The thrilling thing about it all was, that 
his address was met with prolonged cheering on 
the part of the thousands of Filipinos who had 
gathered for the dedication. 

Another evidence of this beautiful friendship 
for America is the painting which adorns the 
walls of one of the Government buildings in 
Manila. It is called "The Welcome to America." 
It was purchased, paid for and erected by Fili- 
pinos ; erected in good will, with laughter in their 
souls, and joy in their hearts. 

It was painted by Hidalgo in Paris in 1904. 

High colors; reds, browns, yellows, golds, 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIENDSHIP 20S 

blues, purples, tell its story. It adorns the panel 
at the end of the Senate Chamber of the Filipino 
Government. 

It has spirit in it and a great, deep sincerity. 

The central figure is a beautiful woman, sym- 
bolic of America. She comes across the Pacific 
carrying the gifts of peace, prosperity, security 
and love to her colony, the Philippines. 

She carries in one hand the American flag. 
At her side is Youth bearing a Harp, symbol 
of the music that America brings into the souls 
of the people whom she comes to serve. Singing 
angels hover about the scene. 

Above the central figure of America, on angel 
wings, is a Youth carrying a lighted torch. To 
the left is a beautiful brown-skinned Filipino 
woman with eyes uplifted to this torch. She 
bears within her ample bosom the children of the 
islands. The torch is symbol of the fact that we 
are handing on the light of our Christian civiliza- 
tion to the children of our colonies. 

I visited this painting many times,, but I never 
visited it that I did not see many Filipinos, both 
young and old, standing before it, with reverent 
eyes. 

I said to a high official of the Government, 
"Does that painting represent the way you Fili- 
pinos feel to-day?" 



S04 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

"Hidalgo has spoken for us. He has voiced 
our feelings well !" was the reply. 

This friendship for the United States is a 
thrilling thing found all over the Far East. One 
finds it in Korea, as well as in the Philippines, 
like a burning light of glory. Korea says, 
"America is our only hope! We have always 
trusted and loved America !'' 

One finds it like a silver stream running 
through the life of China. Dr. Sun Yat Sen 
said to me in Shanghai: "America has always 
been China's staunch friend ! America we trust ! 
America we love ! America is our hope ! America 
is our model !" 

Mr. Tang Shao-yi said, "America's hands and 
those of America alone are clean in her relations 
with China. This cannot be said of the other 
nations.'' 

Then he told me a thrilling story of the Boxer 
Rebellion. He, with two thousand Chinese, who 
were Government officials, were barricaded in a 
compound behind the usual Chinese walls. The 
Boxers were firing on them every day. They had 
run out of food. In fact, they were starving. 

But one morning a bright-faced American boy 
appeared at the gates of the wall. He was ad- 
mitted because he was an American. He asked 
to be taken to Mr. Tang Shao-yi. 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIENDSHIP 205 

"What do you most need V this young Ameri- 
can asked the rich Chinese merchant. 

"We most need food," was the reply. 

"All right, I'll get enough for you to-day!'' 
said the young American. 

"That night/' said Mr. Tang Shao-yi, "that 
American boy returned with five hundred hams 
which the Boxers had thrown away, in addition 
to a thousand sacks of flour which he had gotten 
from the English legation." 

"Wonderful!" I exclaimed. 

"And that boyish American was " 

"Who?" I asked with tense interest, for the 
old man was smiling with a suggestive Oriental 
smile, as if he had a climax up his commodious 
sleeves. 

"That man was Herbert Hoover!" 

And from that interview henceforth and for- 
ever no human being need tell me that the Chinese 
have no sense of the dramatic. 

"That's why we love and trust America," said 
this great Chinese statesman. "It is because 
America has always been our friend in time of 
need!" 

I found this friendship for the United States 
true all over the Oriental world. It was to me a 
great miracle of national friendship. The peoples 
of the Orient trust us. They are not suspicious 
of our intentions in spite of what jingo papers 



506 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

say. We have won their hearts. We have 
claimed their friendship. 

The name "America," which stands in the Ori- 
ental mind for the United States, is a sacred pass- 
port and password. It is a magical word. It 
opens doors that are locked to all the rest of the 
world; it tears down barriers, century-old, that 
have been barricading certain places for ages 
past. That simple word opens hearts that would 
open with none other. 

The eyes of the brown men of the Far East 
open wide at that word, and a new light appears 
in them. This is particularly true in Korea, in 
China, in the Malacca Straits, and in the Philip- 
pines. 

It is enough to bring a flood of tears to the 
heart of an American, lonely for a sight of his 
own flag, homesick for his native shores, to see 
and feel and hear and know the pulse of this 
friendship for our country among millions of 
brown men. 

"It is because we are like you, we Chinese," 
said Tang Shao-yi. "It is because we are both 
Democrats at heart !" 

"It is because you have been our true friends !" 
said Dr. Sun Yat Sen. 

"It is because your ideals are our ideals ; your 
dreams our dreams and your friends our 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIENDSHIP 207 

friends,/' said Wu Ting-fang, one of China's 
greatest leaders, to me. 

"It is because so many of our young men have 
been trained in your American schools, and be- 
cause so many of us feel that the United States 
is our second home. It is because you have sent 
so many good men and women to China to help 
us; to teach us; to live with us; to love us; to 
serve us! It is because your missionaries from 
America have shown the real heart of the United 
States to us !" said Mr. Walter Busch, a Chinese 
American student who is now editor of the Peking 
Leader. 

But whatever the cause, the glorious fact is 
enough to : 

"Send a thrill of rapture through the framework of the 

heart 
And warm the inner bein' till the tear drops want to 

start!" 

But perhaps the highest and holiest Flash- 
lights of Friendship that one finds in the Far 
East is that of the friendship formed by the 
American missionaries for the people among 
whom they are working, and the friendship that 
these people give in return. These are holy 
things. 

The average missionary comes home on his 
furlough, but before he is home three months 
he is homesick to go back to his people. So they 



208 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

come and go across the seas of the world through 
the years, weaving like a great Shuttle of Service 
the fabric of friendship for themselves and for 
the United States. 

This shuttle of service is being woven night 
and day across the Atlantic and across the Pa- 
cific by great ships bearing missionaries going 
and coming; furlough following furlough, after 
six years of service; term after term; leaving 
native land, children, memories; time after time 
until death ends that particular thread, crimson, 
gold, brown or white. The great Shuttle of Love 
weaves the fabric of friendship across the seas 
as the ships come and go, bearing outbound and 
homebound missionaries to foreign fields. 

I am thinking particularly of the Pacific as I 
write this sketch sitting in a room overlooking 
the great harbor of Yokohama where three Jap- 
anese warship lie anchored and two great Pacific 
liners, one on its way to San Francisco and 
another bound for Vancouver. They come and 
go, these great ships. A few days ago the Em- 
press of Asia made its twenty-eighth trip across 
and it soon will start on its twenty-eighth trip 
back to Vancouver again. Some of the ships out 
of San Francisco have made more than a hundred 
trips. So they weave the shuttle back and for- 
ward across this great sea. And never a ship 
sails this sea that it does not carry its passenger 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIENDSHIP 209 

list of missionaries. Our list was more than half 
a hundred. 

As Mr. Forman, in a sympathetic and appre- 
ciative article that he has written for the Ladies' 
Home Journal, says, the common phrase on a 
Pacific liner is,, "There are two hundred and fifty 
passengers and forty-five missionaries on board." 
Every Pacific passenger list immediately divides 
itself into two groups, the missionaries and the 
other passengers. 

Then Mr. Forman proceeds to slay those shal- 
low, narrow-minded, often ignorant and unedu- 
cated tourists and business men who dare to speak 
of this traveling missionary with derision. Mr. 
Forman has no particular interest in missions 
and he has no particular interest in the Church, 
but he started out to investigate this derogatory 
phrase, "and forty-five missionaries." 

Mr. Forman starts his article with these strik- 
ing paragraphs 

*'If ever you cross the Pacific you will find the passen- 
gers on the steamer quietly and automatically dividing 
themselves into two groups. 

" 'How many passengers have we on board ?' you may 
lightly ask your neighbor. 

"And your neighbor, traveled man no doubt (his twelfth 
crossing, he will mention), will smartly reply, with a 
suave, man-of-the-world smile : *A hundred and two pas- 
sengers and forty-five missionaries.' 

"After that you will be initiated and you will be men- 
tioning with an easy grace to some one else that there are 



210 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

on board so many passengers and so many missionaries. 
It becomes a part of the jargon of Pacific crossing." 

But Mr. Forman sees working that Shuttle of 
Service of which I am speaking. He sees, as 
any thinking man sees, as Roosevelt saw, as 
Bryan saw, and as Taft saw,, that the greatest 
single influence for good in the Orient is the 
missionary. Mr. Forman was incensed at this 
careless phrase on the Pacific liners, and he in- 
vestigated the work of our missionaries when he 
was in the Orient, and he came to the decision 
that they are worth more to America, even from 
that selfish standpoint, than all the ambassadors 
that we have sent over, because they are, in their 
crossing and recrossing, weaving a Fabric of 
Friendship between the Orient and the Occident ; 
between the nations of the East and those of the 
West ; between the white peoples and the brown 
peoples ; in spite of the diplomatic differences and 
yellow newspapers in the United States and 
Japan. 

Mr. Forman says about his conclusions : 

"I concluded that any one of the large missions in those 
Oriental countries accomplished, so far as concerns Ameri- 
can standing and prestige, more than all our diplomatic 
representation there put together. I do not believe it to 
be an exaggeration to say that for the Orient the mis- 
sionaries are perhaps the only useful form of what is 
called diplomatic representation." 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIENDSHIP 211 

And again in the same article he says: 

"One good missionary in the right place, it seemed to 
me, can accomplish more than quite a number of am- 
bassadors." 

And again he wonderfully sums up that mis- 
sion of love in a paragraph which I think ought 
to be passed on : 

"But when a missionary establishes a clinic or a hos- 
pital, healing sores and diseases that their own medicine 
men have abandoned as hopeless; when he educates boys 
and girls that otherwise would have remained in dark- 
ness; when, with a whole-souled enthusiasm, he gives 
them counsel, aid and service — and he asks nothing in 
return — then the stolid and passive Chinese or Korean is 
genuinely impressed. Then America really becomes in 
his mind the synonym for kindness and service, and from 
mouth to mouth goes abroad the fame of the land that 
is aiming to do him good, without any menacing back- 
ground of exploitation." 

I talked with one bright- faced, twinkling-eyed, 
red-blooded, big-framed missionary who was 
crossing with his family of a wife and four chil- 
dren. He had spent fifteen years in the Orient 
as a missionary, and then because of illness he 
had been compelled to go to America. There he 
had taken a church and had preached for five 
years. His health came back, and as he told me, 
"The lure of the East got me and I had to come 
back. I never was so happy in my life as I am on 
this trip and the whole family feels the same way. 



212 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

We are going back to our people!" And the way 
he pronounced those italicized words made me 
know that he, too, was weaving a thread in the 
Fabric of Friendship. 

We met a woman who was traveHng back to 
China with her three darHng little tots. I made 
love to all three of them, and it wasn't long before 
I asked one where her Daddy was. I assumed,, 
of course, that they had been home on a furlough 
and that Daddy was back there in China waiting 
anxiously for them to return to him. I pictured 
that meeting, for I have seen many such during 
war days, both on this side and in France. 

''My Daddy is dead," the child said simply 
with a quiver of her little lips. 

"All right,, dear baby, we won't talk about it 
then," for I was afraid that those little trembling 
lips couldn't hold in much longer. But she wanted 
to tell me about it. I soon saw that. She liked 
to talk about her "dear dead Daddy." 

"He went to France," she said simply. 

"Ah, he was a soldier?" I questioned. 

"No, he was better than a soldier, my Mamma 
says. He did not go to kill; he went to help." 
And back of that sentiment and that statement 
I saw a world of struggle and ideals in a mission- 
ary home where the man felt called across the 
seas to be "in it" with his country and at last the 



FLASH-LIGHTS OF FRIENDSHIP 213 

refuge of the man who could go ''not to kill but 
to help." 

"He went to work with the coolies and he got 
the influenza and died last winter. We won't 
have any Daddy any more/' and her little blue 
eyes were misty with tears. And so were mine, 
more misty than I dared let her see. And they 
are misty now as I write about it. And yours 
will be misty if you read about it, as they should 
be. That is something fine in you being called 
out. 

Later I niet the mother. She told me over 
again the story that little Doris had told me of 
the big Daddy who had felt the call to go to 
France in the Y.M.C.A. to help the poor 
''coolies/' several hundred of whom were, by 
strange coincidence, going back to China on the 
same boat with us, and with that brave mother 
and those dear children. These "coolies" were 
going back alive, but he who went to serve them 
died. "Others he saved; Himself he could not 
save," echoed in my soul as that mother and I 
talked. 

"I am going back to the Chinese to spend the 
rest of my life finishing Will's work. It is better 
so. I shall be happier." 

"But the association there — everything — every 
turn you make — every place you go — will remind 
you of him/' I protested. 



214 FLASH-LIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

"It would be what Will would want most of 
all, that I go on with his work. I go gladly. It 
will be the best balm for my sorrow/' 

And far above national friendships there loom 
these snow-white peaks of the sacrificial friend- 
ship the missionaries bear in their hearts for the 
people with whom they live, and serve, and die. 



THE END 



